


By Any Other Name

by ladyfnick



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Language of Flowers, M/M, also not sorry for the pun in the summary, and not really a shop, except it isn't an AU of anything, how do you even tag original works, sappy as hell and I'm not sorry, there should be an archive warning for my dumb sense of humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-03 04:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11524653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyfnick/pseuds/ladyfnick
Summary: As the result of his terrible friends accidentally blowing up a greenhouse, Chase Hart is stuck working at a farmer's market for his entire summer. Working in tourist hell is awful, but when he meets the cute kid working in the bakery across the street, things start looking up.Will love be able to bloom, or will Chase's meddling friends, douchebag father, or general poor life choices dump herbicide all over his love life?





	1. Chapter 1

The sun was beating down and the air shimmered with heat. It was barely the crack of dawn and no civilized person would be expected to be out of bed and interacting with polite society, and yet there Chase was, watering a bunch of goddamn plants.

Honestly what kind of father suggested working off a minor felony at a bloody farmer's market instead of a simple trip to a juvenile detention center? Of course, Tarragon had been happy to jump on the chance- most likely just for the chance to sleep in, the lazy sod. In Chase’s defense, it had been a rather small greenhouse that had been blown up, though after what Randy had done to that one bed of petunias... Chase was probably lucky no one was suggesting he be hung and/or drawn and quartered.

He glared at the eight thousandth box of stupid flowers he had to haul out of the greenhouse pickup truck. Really, he should be blaming all his fellow “cult members”, as the police had gleefully called them, for abandoning him to take the fall when they all fled upon seeing a portly, half-asleep gardener spot them in front of her burning greenhouse.

Honestly, could you really call them a cult when most of the Black Hawks’ time was spent smoking pot, listening to Tom bitch about everything under the sun, and occasionally accidentally drunkenly blowing up greenhouses? Chase didn’t think so.

Thus, the shitty, unpaid work in the tourist hell hole also known as the daily farmer’s market. He was probably already getting sunburnt too, just to add injury to insult.

Man, fuck all those jerks, see if he ever painstakingly shoved exam preparation down their throats at the last minute again when he’d done the exact same thing.

He heaved the last crate onto a wooden table, which creaked alarmingly, but didn’t collapse like Chase had assumed it would the last five mornings.

Green Thumbs was the name of the farmer’s market that took place every year from late spring to early summer, mostly populated by tourists who wanted to “rediscover their roots” or some other bullcrap, which took the form of buying shitty beeswax candles and overpriced organic ice cream. And apparently also in the form of buying potted plants and wilting bouquets of flowers, for some ungodly reason.

Tarragon’s Garden Center had a booth smack in the middle of the entire debacle, meaning a good fifty percent of the people who stopped at it were either asking where the nearest bathroom was or where the Starbucks was.

The truth was it was only a block up from the market, but Chase was an asshole and always sent them to the shitty one four blocks uphill away, mostly out of spite or sheer schadenfreude. If _Chase_ couldn’t have nice coffee, then neither could the pretentious jackasses who liked to move the carefully arranged plants around without putting them back and who let their dogs wreak havoc without compunction.

There hadn’t been many booths open during the first week and a half of his indentured servitude- Tarragon had made him weed out _all_ of the garden beds when he’d called it slavery on his first day- but the emptiness was to be expected, given it was only nearing the end of May. Although, he wouldn’t have faulted any confusion given how bloody hot it was, even at nine in the morning.

After less than a week on the job, Tarragon had decided that he was competent enough to handle setting up all the plant crap on his own, which he thought said more about her desire for a lie-in than Chase’s own competence with flowers. Which was pretty non-existent.

He really had no clue if it had been his father or Tarragon who had decided that him getting decent marks in botany in high school meant he knew how to deal with the care and maintenance of foliage, but regardless, they were incredibly mistaken. All Chase had learned in that pointless class was how to accurately draw an aspen leaf and he had memorized the entire section on the language of flowers at the back of their ancient textbooks, just so he could send bouquets to his ex-girlfriends that secretly meant things like ‘unfaithful cow’ for Chase’s own, singular, petty amusement. There had also probably been a section on composting or something, but he’d forgotten it the instant he’d no longer need to know enough to try and cram it into Randy’s thick skull before the final exam.

This morning, it seemed that a few other unlucky sods had been forced to show up at the hellhole, given the sudden increase in activity in the booths around him.

Maybe that meant he’d get less Starbucks questions, since there would be people who weren’t perpetually scowl-y to ask. He almost felt disappointed until he remembered that he’d remembered to pack a book to read to kill time.

Across from Tarragon’s booth was some sort of bakery thing. It had been empty until that morning, just a few lonely tables and a hand-painted sign so faded Chase could only tell it was a bakery because of the cartoon muffins. It looked like today Chase has going to have a neighbour. Maybe he could get them in on the Starbucks prank.

The luckless bastard who worked there was busily setting out cutesy baskets of bread and crap, so Chase didn’t bother trying to get their attention. Instead, he spent fifteen minutes ripping petals off of the wilted flowers he couldn’t sell and imagining it was Anya’s stupid head.

Eventually the kid across the way ran out of things to fuss over and settled onto an uncomfortable looking stool and Chase got his first good look at him.

He was... adorable. His hair was cut in some tragic bowl cut more suited to a little kid, and his expression was very serious. Chase just wanted to go over and give the kid a noogie and maybe poke him in the cheek until he cracked and smiled.

Chase tilted his head, considering. He was also kinda cute, ignoring the dumb hair and the dumb button-down shirt (really in that heat? Clearly the kid was a loony). Chase leant forward, resting his chin on one hand. The kid was also probably old enough for this to not be creepy. Probably. Eh, good enough for him.

He jumped when the kid noticed Chase staring and nearly toppled off his stool in surprise.

Chase grinned, probably showing too many teeth. Adorable.

Now that he’d been caught he supposed he ought to introduce himself. And he could hardly do that without a gift if he was going to ask a favour like continuing a stupid prank. It was only polite, really.

Tarragon liked to give kids that stopped by free flowers, so there was always buckets of stuff that couldn’t be sold because it was wilted or had been chewed on by a bug or something, so Chase dug into that. First baby’s breath, because the kid seemed so adorably naive, then white lilacs for the same reason, and a bit of wisteria because the bouquet's purpose was to ‘welcome’.

The kid’s eyebrows rose as he first watched Chase hastily slap together the bunch of flowers and then they rose further when Chase made his way across the road to him.

“Hey there,” Chase greeted, grinning like a madman. “These are for you. I’m Chase”

“Where’s Mrs. Tarragon?” The kid asked instead of being polite and introducing himself in turn. “Is she okay with you giving away flowers like this?”

Chase shrugged. “She’s probably at home sleeping while I slave away here. And they’re out of the discard bin, so don’t get too excited.” He waggled the bunch, trying to get the kid to take them. “C’mon I picked off a bug out of it and everything, just for you.”

Hesitantly, the kid took them, like he was worried they’d bite or something. And after Chase had gone to all the trouble of picking that gross beetle looking thing off of it for the kid.

“Do you work for Mrs. Tarragon?” The kid asked, setting the flowers down quickly.

“No, I just stole her truck and set up all her dumb plants at her booth in this tourist-infested hell.”

The kid looked a bit alarmed, like he hadn’t ever heard of sarcasm, so Chase added, “Yeah I work for her. Sort of.”

“Sort of?” The kid asked, looking lost.

Chase shrugged. “Long story. One of her greenhouses got a bit blown up because I have horrible taste in friends and so now I’m working for her to pay off their stupidity.”

The kid was looking even more alarmed so Chase plowed on ahead anyways. He was nothing if not good at ignoring when he’d made people uncomfortable. “What’s your name?” He asked, trying to tone down the creeper grin a few notches.

“Oh, I’m Isaac... My nan owns the bakery so I work here every summer.”

He didn’t look very thrilled by this so Chase said, “Lucky it’s not the rest of the year too, yeah?”

Isaac nodded. “Well. Yes. I mean, until now I’d be busy with school, but now I’m done I’m going to be working here... forever, I guess.” He looked even less happy than before, nice one Chase.

On the bright side, he said he was out of school, so that meant he was legal. Probably.

Chase was about to make a comment that was probably not well thought through, when the first pack of tourists rounded the corner, looking cheery and obnoxious as usual.

“Ugh. It begins,” Chase muttered, glowering at a yuppie with a dog and two tiny kids. Because there was no god, Chase just knew he’d have to deal with her and her hellspawn.

“They’re not that bad,” Isaac said, but he didn’t sound terribly convinced.

“Guess I should go deal with them,” Chase said as a couple headed towards Tarragon’s booth. It was almost certainly his hate-fueled imagination, but he swore they had matching demonic smirks on their faces, like they were plotting which table of plants to mix up first. “Nice to meet you, neighbour.”

The rest of the morning was much like the rest except for the part where inexplicably there were people that actually wanted to buy flowers and shit instead of just asking for directions and suddenly he was being harassed from every corner about ‘is this plant a perennial or an annual?’ and ‘how much sun does this one need?’.

So basically, it was nothing like the last week and a half and Chase knew fuck-all what he was doing. The Starbucks people were still around, so there was at least one thing he could purposefully do wrong rather than by accident.

It was just after twelve when the steady stream of people abruptly died off. Apparently, people had better places to spend their lunch breaks or something. Chase did not get yuppies.

Instead of sitting back down and being useless like usual, Chase set about watering the plants. It wasn’t out of a sudden urge to be a good employee or a sudden streak of helpfulness that the whole community service thing was probably supposed to inspire, but rather because Tarragon normally showed up after lunch with more plants and shit and got crabby when the watering wasn’t done.

Isaac was perched on the stool at the bakery booth, which inexplicably _hadn’t_ gotten flooded (yuppies, man, they chose plants over baked good? What the hell), and was making a series of involuntary faces at Chase, or rather his actions.

He’d been doing that, especially whenever Chase needed to make something up about succulents or pill bug removal when a tourist asked him a question that wasn’t about Starbucks or the location of the restrooms. Some of his bullshit was vaguely based on things he sort of remembered from botany, the rest whatever he thought would sound the least like he’d pulled it out of his ass, and really the worst that could happen was that some plants wouldn’t make it. And then they’d come back and get more plants from Tarragon. Really, Chase was just being a good salesperson.

But he could only take so many faces pulled in his direction, so eventually he called over, “Your face is going to stick that way!”

Isaac, predictably, turned pink, apparently having not noticed that he’d been making faces, or maybe having not noticed that Chase had noticed.

He also, sadly, did not explain why he’d been making faces, which had kind of had been the point.

There weren’t any more yuppies around, so Chase didn’t feel too bad about abandoning his watering can to go talk to Isaac again instead of shouting across the road.

“So, what’s with the faces?” He asked, leaning both elbows on the counter.

“Oh, um, I didn’t mean...” Isaac mumbled, still pink around the edges, though that could have been from the sun still beating down relentlessly.

“Course you didn’t. But you were for a reason, so what is it?”

Isaac shifted uncomfortably, but didn’t answer.

Chase noticed that the sad little bouquet he’d given Isaac that morning had been carefully arranged in a jam jar and tucked out of the way. This was both adorable, but also gave him an idea.

“Be right back,” he said and went back to Tarragon’s to dig through the discard buckets again.

He found a whole bunch of chrysanthemums, but they were yellow not white, which wasn’t right at all, so he left them be. Luckily, he found a couple sprigs of bluebells, slightly squashed and wilted, so he brought those over.

“Here,” he said, brandishing them at Isaac, who jumped, either from the brandishing or from not having seen Chase dash back over.

Isaac took them, looking a bit confused, but added them to the others in the jam jar.

“Now you’ve accepted them, so I’ve bought you off. You have to tell me now!”

Isaac actually smiled slightly at this. “Because you gave me rejected flowers?”

“A _gift_ ,” Chase emphasized. “Means you have to tell the truth. So, what was I doing that has your knickers in a twist?”

“It’s not a big deal or anything...”

Chase gestured for him to get on with it.

“It’s just,” Isaac picked at a faded friendship bracelet, “How much do you know about plants?”

“I am awesome at drawing them,” Chase told him sincerely, “And that is about it.”

“Oh.” Isaac frowned. “Because you shouldn’t water the dusty miller that much, they don’t need that much water. And they should have more sun,” he explained, gesturing at one of the shelves of plants tucked under the shade of the booth.

“Which one is that?” Chase asked, squinting at where Isaac had gestured. He didn’t really bother to tell the non-flowering ones apart, they all looked the same anyways.

“The silvery looking one, fairly small.”

Chase went over to the plants and found the one Isaac had described. There was a bit of water in the tray the potted plant sat in, so he drained that and stuck it in with some of the plants that sat in full sun next to the booth.

“Better?” He asked Isaac when he was finished.

Isaac nodded. “It’s funny that Mrs. Tarragon doesn’t have you doing inventory or the accounting instead of dealing with her plants directly, since you don’t know a lot about them...” He said.

Chase nodded. “I know, right? I tried convince her and my dad that I could be her cabana boy or eye candy or something, but neither of them went for it. I had to quit my job at Starbucks and everything.”

“You worked at Starbucks?”

Chase levelled him a look. “That’s all you got out of that? Really? Yeah, I worked at Starbucks. The good one not the shitty one, too.”

“I can help you with the plants... I mean if you want. I don’t mean to be rude, I just-”

“That would be fantastic,” Chase said emphatically. “I am not exaggerating when I say I know fuckall about plants.”

Isaac gave him a timid smile. “Okay.”

Not long after that Tarragon showed up, eyebrows raised in surprise, presumably because the stand wasn’t in the shambles it usually was following Chase being at it alone.

“Same time tomorrow,” She said by way of goodbye, much less grumpily than usual. Chase really needed to remember to thank Isaac for his help with the plants if this was what happened when he didn’t fuck the plant stuff up. Maybe he should get him a gift. It’d probably have to be more reject flowers given how outstandingly broke Chase was, due to having to quit his gainful employment to a soulless coffee corporation in favor of being an unpaid indentured plant servant.

He grabbed his bag, waved goodbye to Isaac and headed home on foot since it wasn’t raining and he was too broke for the bus.

~

Charles Sr., occasionally referred as Chase’s father, wasn’t home because it was only like four in the afternoon, but his mom was conspicuously absent from her normal spot in the conservatory or in her bedroom.

Chase sighed and started checking the larger cupboards and closets, knocking gently on the doors before opening the doors.

He found her on his fifth try, in the extra empty pantry off the kitchen.

“Hey mom,” he said to the form curled up tightly the corner. He crouched down so he could see her better under the shelf. “What’s wrong?”

Eyes peered out at him suspiciously. “People were at the door. They wanted to take me away. They tried to get in.” She shifted slightly so she was crouched on her feet, hands braced on the wall. Chase shifted back so he wasn’t fully blocking the doorway. “ _You_ want me to go away. You always make me take all those pills, poisoning my mind.”

“They’re just melatonin pills, mom, remember? I showed you how the bottle was sealed before I gave them to you,” Chase said, feeling far more weary than half a day sitting on his ass selling plants should have reasonably made him feel.

His mother had struggled with mental health problems since before he’d been born, but towards the end of his stint in high school, things had taken a real downward spiral, resulting in her rarely leaving the house. In a normal family, this sort of thing would have been followed by seeing a doctor of some kind, but given the magnitude of asshole his father was, the only thing that had happened was Chase doing whatever research he could on his own to find the little things he could do. Hence the melatonin. Half the internet said it was malarkey, but the other half said it had a slim chance of helping his mom relax. Given his dearth of choices, Chase chose to believe it did some good. It hardly could do _more_ harm than Charles Sr. did with his inaction.

“Why are you in my house?” His mother asked, her expression torn between honest curiosity and suspicion.

Mentally, Chase sighed. Looked like she was having a worse day than he’d thought. Her failing to recognize him as her son was reserved for her very worst days, the ones where it was best to make her as comfortable as possible and then leave her alone before she got too wound up in fear and mistrust.

“It’s just me, Chase, remember? I brought you flowers like I always do, your favourites.” He leant forward and set the flowers down as far into the pantry he could reach without moving. She shuffled forward to snatch them and then scuttled back to the corner.

Pink carnations, rosemary and windflowers, tied together with a bit of string.

She looked up from the flowers at him. For a second Chase thought he saw a hint of recognition, but she said, a bit wistfully. “My son was named Chase, but he left.”

Chase barely resisted sighing. “Well, I’m not going to leave. Do you want to come out of here and sit in the conservatory? It’s a beautiful day out.”

“No!” she snapped, pressing herself harder against the wall. “You can’t make me!”

“Okay,” Chase agreed. “Are you hungry? I can bring you some soup.”

She stared hard at him hard for a minute. Chase waited patiently. Getting his mom to eat was always a bit of a game, but it was one he was good at winning. He’d had a fair amount of practice in the last few years. After watching him silently for another long moment, she finally nodded like he knew she would- Chase doubted she’d eaten since the day before, she had to be starving.

Winning their little game didn’t give him any sort of satisfaction, just the usual low simmering frustration with his father. He stomped back into the kitchen to get some soup from the fridge.

This couldn’t continue as it was. Charles Sr. worked nine to five without fail every weekday and Chase himself was working odd hours with Tarragon, and inevitably his mom was left alone at least for a few hours. Charles Sr. refused to have her put in assisted living despite neither of them being qualified to look after her.

It wasn’t because they couldn’t afford it. It wasn’t because they had no choice. It was only because Charles Sr. cared more about what people would say if they heard about her condition than his wife’s health. Like having a shut-in wife didn’t fuel all of its own set of rumours. In his more charitable moments, Chase thought that maybe his father’s refusal to act stemmed from a strange sort of belief that if he didn’t outwardly acknowledge his wife’s situation, it wouldn’t really be real. Most of the time though, Chase just thought his father was a heartless bastard who cared more for his reputation than the woman he’d married.

But his reputation would just have to suffer the indignity of having a mentally ill wife, because this wasn’t working, Chase fumed as he went through the familiar process of making his mother dinner- calorie dense and quick to eat, given her growing mistrust of food, even ones that only Chase touched.

Chase set the bowl of soup down inside the pantry.

“It’s poisoned,” his mom insisted.

“No, it isn’t,” Chase said, “See, here, I’ll have a sip.” He picked up the spoon and ate a mouthful.

She eyed him carefully, so Chase took another spoonful and then pushed the bowl closer to him mom before scooting back out of reach.

“I don’t like you. Go away,” she told him, but she was moving towards the bowl, so it counted as a win.

“Okay,” Chase agreed. This was a common enough announcement, and not one that he let upset him anymore. He’d been in grade nine the first time she’d said anything like that. He’d cried, and she’d cried too and she’d told him that she hadn’t meant it, she’d just been confused for a moment and had gotten him mixed up with someone else. It had been a long time since she’d had the self-awareness to say anything of the kind again.

“I’ll be in the conservatory if you need me,” Chase said and got to his feet, feeling like he was a hundred years old.

He left the pantry door partly open so he could hear her if something happened, and flopped bonelessly onto a couch in the conservatory.

Late afternoon light streamed in through the enormous windows, making it almost uncomfortably warm. Once upon a time, the room had been filled with houseplants and little potted tomato plants when his mom had still enjoyed gardening. The plants had died unfortunate deaths with only Charles Sr. and himself to look after them.

He supposed with his experience at Tarragon’s and Isaac’s guidance he probably could have managed not to kill a fern or something, but his heart really wasn’t in it. The conservatory had always been his mother’s domain, and Chase always felt like an interloper in there anyways.

He drifted to sleep slowly, remembering his mom smiling holding a watering can, telling Chase not to knock that cactus over for goodness sake...

He was roughly shaken awake. Enough time had passed that the room was shockingly dim compared to the bright sunlight he’d fallen asleep in.

“Where’s your mother?” Charles Sr. demanded, gripping him tightly by the shoulders.

Chase struggled to sit up, still feeling half asleep. “In the spare pantry,” He muttered, rubbing at his eyes. His nap had gone on a lot longer than he’d meant it to and his brain felt fuzzy.

Charles Sr. let go of him and abruptly left the room.

“Dad, hey wait-” Chase scrambled to follow him, “Just leave her alone, she’s fine in there.”

Charles Sr. was already standing in the pantry, trying to pull his mom to her feet. “Come on out of here, dear. Let’s go-”

“No!” she shouted, trying to twist out his grip.

“Dad-” Chase grabbed him by the shoulder but was shrugged off.

“You’ll be more comfortable in your room, so why don’t you-”

“No! Don’t touch me!” She yelled, starting to struggle harder, nearly hitting her head on a shelf in the small space.

“Come on. You’re just overtired. If you-” Charles Sr. started to say, pulling her forward. “Sonofa-” he stumbled backwards into Chase, knocking both of them out of the pantry and back into the hall. His mom crawled back under the shelf, glaring balefully at both of them.

“She bit me!” Charles Sr. hissed, holding one hand carefully. Chase peered over his shoulder; sure enough, the meat of his palm had a series of red marks. Though the skin hadn’t been broken, the bite was rapidly purpling in spots.

“Outside,” Chase snapped and dragged his father out through the back door in the kitchen before he could get his wits about him and protest.

“We can’t keep this up,” Chase said very seriously. “We need to-”

“I will not have her locked up,” Charles Sr. hissed vehemently. Both of them looked over at the still open door. Chase shut it. The last thing they need was for her to hear them talking about sending her away.

“She’s getting worse! I saw a FedEx slip on the door and she told me someone tried to break in.”

“I will not have-” Charles Sr. started to repeat.

“I’m going back to school in the fall!” Chase interrupted, voice low. He couldn’t look his father in the eye, or even look up at him to see his expression, but knew the sort of look he was being given.

Charles Sr. was dead silent for a long moment. Finally, he said, nearly growling; “Of all of the selfish things you’ve done, this is by far the worst.”

Chase could feel his face going red with anger and shoved his fists into his pockets to keep from doing anything stupid. “Selfish?” He demanded, eyes snapping up, “I left school for over a year for you-”

“For your mother-” Charles Sr. started to correct.

“No, it was for you, because you won’t let mom go somewhere where they have people to help her! She’s so scared, dad, and we can’t fix that!” He paused, and said, trying to sound less accusatory, “She wouldn’t want me to throw my life away for her, if she remembered.”

“She wouldn’t be like this if you’d just stayed in the first place!” Charles Sr. snarled, seemingly at the end of his patience.

Chase didn’t even bother to reply to that. “We need to put her in assisted living before she gets hurt.”

“No.” Charles Sr.’s voice was firm, leaving no room for arguments.

“Why not?” Chase demanded. “Because if she gets help, all of the other politicians will gossip about how you’ve got a mad wife? That’s damn well not a good enough-”

Charles Sr. slapped him.

“That isn’t the reason and you know it. She doesn’t want to go,” Charles Sr. said very quietly.

His cheek stung, but it hurt far less than other less tangible parts of him hurt. He felt a distant sort of self-disgust- shouldn’t he have been used to being betrayed like this?

Chase didn’t say anything in reply, his tongue tied up with too many bitter, angry things, so he just turned on his heel and left in disgust.

~

Along with gardening, his mom had also used to enjoy biking around town, so Chase borrowed her old bike to get to Black’s Bar. The bike was cotton candy pink and had a basket. He’d ripped the fake plastic flowers off ages ago so it was slightly less emasculating than it could have been.

The bar was more or less empty, but that wasn’t surprising given that it was only six pm on a Tuesday and Black’s wasn’t the sort of place you popped into for a bite to eat unless you wanted a chance of food poisoning along with your meal.

Leo wasn’t around, because that jerk never was when Chase needed him to be, but his older brother, Tony, who actually owned the bar, was an alright guy, even if Chase didn’t know him as well as his brother.

Tony took one look at Chase and marched back behind the bar and made him something improbably pink and slammed it onto the counter without a word.

Chase took a sip. It tasted a bit like pink Kool-Aid but mostly like vodka.

“I want six of these,” he proclaimed.

“Let’s start with three,” Tony suggested.

~

Chase was lucky in that he’d had the sense to program a daily alarm into his phone, as he’d never remember to reset it every night.

He was also unlucky given that it went off at seven in the morning and he’d fallen asleep with his face smashed into one of the appallingly sticky booth seats at Black’s. His back ached from the position he was twisted in to be able to fit into the booth laying down and his head ached so much he decided to leave his eyes only open a crack for the time being.

He faintly recalled Tony’s nice boyfriend Roland or Robert or something guiding him away from his barstool and over to one of the booths and setting a glass of water on the table.

He squinted up.

Sure enough, it was sitting on the edge of the table, tantalizingly out of reach while laying down.

With a groan, he slowly levered himself upright, a blanket falling off of him in the process.

He stared at the blanket on the floor. It had little black dogs printed on it and had no place being in a dive like Black’s.

Shrugging, he grabbed the water glass and slowly but without pause, chugged the whole thing down.

There was also a packet of Advil on the table. He loved Tony’s boyfriend. He was going to marry him, or at least give him Tarragon’s reject flowers. Even if he could never remember his name. Richard, maybe? He didn’t look much like a Richard, since he was the complete opposite of a Dick.

“Morning, mate!” Tony boomed from the door that went up to the flat he shared with Leo above the bar.

Chase winced.

Tony laughed and walked over to him. “Rough night, eh? Rowan’s making breakfast at his place if you want some,” Tony offered.

Rowan! That was the name of Tony’s boyfriend. Chase was going to get the man a sainthood for the Advil and water and for putting up with both Black boys’ utter bullshit more frequently than any mere mortal should be expected to withstand.

Sainthood or not, Chase grimaced at the thought of food.

“Thought as much. Gonna have to kick you out though,” he eyed Chase thoughtfully sniffing slightly. “Well, you can use the bathroom first, extra toothbrushes in the one upstairs, too.”

Gratefully, Chase stumbled upstairs and freshened up. He obviously didn’t have any spare clothes, but he felt infinitely better after brushing his teeth.

He glanced at his watch and swore- he was due at Tarragon’s house to drive her truck full of the day’s plants to the booth in less than twenty minutes.

He hightailed it back downstairs and outside where Tony was waiting to lock up.

“Thanks,” he said as he picked up his mom’s bike, miraculously untouched after a night left unlocked outside.

“No problem,” Tony replied, fiddling with a ring of keys. He gave Chase a measured look. “Sorry about your mom, mate.”

Chase barely resisted making a face. Oh hell he’d babbled on about that, hadn’t he? And to Leo’s brother to boot. Where was Leo when Chase needed him? At least he’d have the sense to kick the maudlin out of Chase before it got too out of hand rather than actually letting him whine for hours.

Tony gave him an overly cheery wave and Chase set off for Tarragon’s on his mom’s bike, feeling both embarrassed and like he was about to puke. They were remarkably similar feelings.

~

As usual, Tarragon was nowhere to be seen, but the keys to her truck were in their hiding space under an ornamental rock, and the greenhouse that held the plants ready to be sold was unlocked and waiting.

He spent a miserable fifteen minutes hauling flats of tiny plants across the meticulously kept lawn and into the flatbed of the truck, hating his entire existence with a burning passion of a thousand suns.

Honestly, the next time Leo got it into his head to cheer Chase up about nearly being a dropout art student living with his parents and working at a shitty coffee shop, they were going to have _words_. All of those things were true except for being a dropout (though it nearly was accurate since Chase couldn’t defer another semester before he _would_ be considered a dropout) but that wasn’t any comfort.

To be fair to Leo, going out for drinks (as unknowingly paid for by Mr. and Mrs. Black’s credit card) had gotten a bit of hand and that hadn’t been his fault. No Chase laid the blame for that squarely on Anya and Randy. Anya mostly, because who honestly demands her fiancé find her an orchid at 2 AM or else?

Chase frowned as he crammed the last pot of tomatoes into the truck, the leaves tickling at his face.

“Actually, I blame Randy,” He grumbled as he eased the truck down Tarragon’s long, uneven driveway. No one but Randy would break into a greenhouse to steal a plant and then accidentally blow it up. At least, Chase hoped no one else on the planet was capable of that much idiocy. The planet could not be expected to withstand more than one Randy.

Three intersections away from the market, Chase sighed.

“No, it’s my fault,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face.

It really was his fault for having such poor taste in friends.

~

Several weeks passed, the market swelling both with more businesses in the empty stalls and with more tourists and their annoying dogs. Consequently, more and more people were around Tarragon’s booth, asking Chase questions he didn’t know how to answer about plants and shit. Luckily, he was slowly starting to remember some of the things Isaac told him whenever Chase came over and asked him to fix all the things. Once he’d literally done that when he’d noticed one of the plants Chase knew Tarragon prized looked all limp and droopy.

They’d grown surprisingly close in that time. Chase was unused to being friends with someone who wasn’t... well, wasn’t a giant asshole, really. Isaac was fairly shy, at least until you got to know him. Which Chase had, through sheer perseverance, bugging him about the plants, asking him questions about himself and generally being an all-around pain.

Surprisingly enough, Isaac had never told him to shove off, like most of Chase’s friends would have. He’d learned that Isaac was exceptionally patient, good around kids (sometimes sneaking them “broken” cookies that had “accidentally” fallen), but that he was outstandingly uncomfortable around anyone near his age or older.

A couple times Chase had abandoned Tarragon’s booths to scare off whoever was hassling Isaac. Isaac always insisted it wasn’t necessary, and that it didn’t matter since they were paying customers, but Chase could see the relief in his eyes.

“No seriously, that Gino kid is trying to get in your pants,” Chase insisted after he’d chased the blond git off for a third time in a week and a half.

Isaac spluttered, his face turning bright red.

“No, he isn’t!”

“He totes is,” Chase confirmed. “But you can do so much better, so don’t even worry. I’ll keep him off. I could totally pretend to be your boyfriend and stuff! Actually, that wouldn’t work, everyone would know you can do better than me too...”

Isaac was still red but snorted. “No really, we went to school together. He was awful to me all the time.”

“Because of forbidden loooooove,” Chase enthused. Isaac remained unimpressed.

However, he did look amused the next time Gino showed up and Chase hit on him until he stormed off, face a truly outstanding shade of red. Chase patted himself on the back for that one and he had to hold back a cackle every time Gino passed through the market and turned right back around to avoid Chase. It was a surprisingly frequent occurrence, and eventually he gave up not laughing at the look of sheer embarrassment that appeared on the brat’s face the second he spotted Chase looming in the garden booth.

May gave way to June, the little market slowly filling with more occupied booths, and the sun only beating down even harder. Chase began to enjoy working at Tarragon’s even if was an unpaid and usually sun burnt affair, solely because of Isaac. He was fun to tease, quick witted, when not being overly shy, and he didn’t mind playing twenty questions when Chase was dying of boredom. Isaac would help him with the plants to keep Chase from accidentally killing them, and Chase would flirt with the customers until they left with more bread than they’d intended to buy. It was a great system.

Chase would sporadically give Isaac flowers out of the reject bucket too, sometimes for a reason but more often just because of the faces he’d make; first startled, then embarrassed, then quietly pleased when he thought Chase wasn’t looking.

They never saw each other outside the market; Isaac seemed to live there, already arranging baked goods whenever Chase arrived, as demanded by Tarragon’s unpredictable schedule. Chase almost wished he saw Isaac outside of work, most of his friends having found excuses to not be in the city after the greenhouse fiasco, so when he wasn’t working, he was left at a loose end. On the other hand, if anyone found out they were friends, Leo was sometimes around and would have demanded to meet Isaac, and he would have probably scared him out of hanging around Chase. He liked the idea of having Isaac all to himself, but that wasn’t something Chase liked to dwell on.

~

It was a Wednesday, which meant it was the least busy day in existence. Nobody bought plants or fancy artisan bread on Wednesdays, apparently. On the one hand, it meant that there was a significant decrease in people bugging Chase about if the plants were organic or blessed by Tibetan monks or whatever, but it also meant that he was bored as hell and had nothing to do.

After an hour of fussing with the plants as per Isaac’s instructions, he was left with only failing to juggle several extremely stale buns for entertainment. He was extremely bad at it, so it mostly resulted in him nailing himself in the face with bread and scaring the shit out of a stray cat with a rouge bun. But he also succeeded in making Isaac laugh so hard he snorted water up his nose, so Chase counted it as a win, even if he got flour in his eyes.

Isaac had been extra sad looking that day, as compared to the only vaguely unhappy expression he’d had the day before, so Chase had been doing his best to fix that, with mixed results. He was probably going to have to bust out the flowers, even if there were slimmer pickings than usual that day.

They were sitting at the bakery’s booth, since Isaac was too paranoid to leave it, with Isaac at his stool behind the counter and Chase sitting on the ground with his back to the booth, soaking up the unseasonably warm sunlight.

“Why didn’t you go to university?” Isaac asked out of nowhere, several long minutes after Chase had given up on juggling. He swore one of the stale buns had bruised his face, entirely possible given it felt like a small brick, and there was only so far Chase was willing to go in the name of entertainment.

Chase craned his head up, looking up at Isaac. He had his chin resting on one hand, eyes looking off to the side, expression deeply unhappy.

“I did,” Chase replied honestly, without really meaning to. He usually told people he’d never left for university, since it saved the hassle of making up a reason for sort of dropping out.

“You did?” Isaac echoed.

He looked more curious than unhappy, so Chase girded his loins and continued, “Yeah, I was at school for art, had to leave three semesters back.”

Luckily Isaac didn’t ask why he’d had to leave, and instead asked, “How did you know it was what you wanted to do?”

Chase shrugged. “Drawing’s always been something I liked doing. Didn’t know where I was going to go with it, but at the time I figured I had four years to get that straight.”

He could see the question hovering on Isaac’s lips, so he dove right in with, “Why d’you ask? Your gran want you to stay behind and look after the old family business?”

Isaac sighed. “No. The opposite.”

Chase twisted around so he was facing Isaac, if a few feet shorter. “She wants you to go to uni and you just want to keep doing this?” He guessed doubtfully. His impression was that Isaac didn’t particularly enjoy the bakery business, but Chase knew he wasn’t always the best judge of things.

Isaac shook his head again. “No. God no, I hate all this,” he said, almost absently, and then abruptly sat up straight, one hand slapping over his mouth like he hadn’t meant to say that.

“I-I mean-”

“It’s okay,” Chase rushed to reassure him, “I won’t tell anyone. Scout’s honor,” He added, hand over his heart. At no point in his life had he ever remotely been a scout, but Isaac hardly need to know that.

“Gran wants me to get a business degree so I can take over the whole thing. Like dad did,” Isaac said miserably.

“Tough shoes to fill?” Chase guessed.

“Impossible. He was just so good at everything,” Isaac said, lips pursing and expression going tight. “He got amazing grades while on scholarship at the private school here, and he got a full ride scholarship to a big university where he got his degree, and then he opened the second bakery uptown.” Isaac sighed, head tipping forward as he rubbed both hands through his dark hair, tugging. “I couldn’t get the scholarship and I had to get a tutor for _all_ my classes so I could get high enough grades so that gran would be happy.”

“Hey now, I’m sure you’re plenty smart,” Chase said standing up and grabbing both of Isaac’s wrists gently before he scalped himself.

Isaac snorted. “Right. I barely managed to convince her that I should spend a year at the bakery before school. Not to mention there’s no way I’ll get more than a partial scholarship to even a smaller university.”

“Okay no more pity party for you-” Chase said pulling Isaac up by the wrists, the booth counter an awkward barrier between them. “I know for a fact that you’re crazy smart- how else can you remember all that stuff about plants? I’ve been working for Tarragon for ages now and _I_ can’t even remember how much to water them.”

Isaac snorted, a smile creeping into the corners of his mouth, just as Chase had intended.

“Now repeat after me,” he instructed, starring Isaac dead in the eyes, face almost comically serious, “I am a fucking genius who knows shit about plants like a badass and probably aced his fancy private school classes out of sheer stubbornness.”

Isaac tried to free his hands, presumably to hide the honest-to-god giggle at this, but Chase absolutely refused to relinquish his grip. “I’m not repeating that, you utter loon!” Isaac protested, smiling helplessly.

“A loon?” Chase demanded indignantly, “I’m going to have to punish you for impinging my honour, sir!”

“You what?” Isaac was out-and-out laughing at him by this point, all traces of unhappiness gone.

“Punishment!” Chase declared, letting go of his wrists. “I’ll duel you- no, wait!” he ruffled a hand over Isaac’s overgrown bowlcut. His hair felt surprisingly soft under his palm, and nearly distracted him from his point. “I’m going to cut your hair.”

Isaac looked confused. “You’re punishing me by... cutting my hair?”

Chase shrugged. “Nah, that’s just an excuse, your haircut just burns my eyes when I look at it.”

Isaac self-consciously ran a hand over his head. “Gran usually does that for me, but it’s been awhile I guess.”

“It’s _awful_ ,” Chase explained. It really was. Isaac would surely bring all the girls and boys to the yard if only his hair wasn’t so utterly terrible. It was hard to notice how cute someone was when their hair was in the form of the world’s worst overgrown bowl cut. It like Spock and the Beatles combined on Isaac’s head in the worst way imaginable.

“Have you cut hair before?” Isaac asked doubtfully only ten minutes later. He was sitting on a chair inside the bakery booth with his back to Chase, who was holding a pair of scissors they’d found in a box of random odds and ends under the bakery counter.

“Sure have,” Chase confirmed. He had actually; he trimmed his mom’s every other month so it didn’t get too long and annoy her. She tended to try to yank it out by the roots when it annoyed her.

Twenty minutes later, Chase was seriously regretting every decision he’d ever made to bring him to the conclusion that he was even remotely qualified to cut poor Isaac’s hair.

“It’s not that bad,” Isaac said, squinting into the camera on Chase’s phone- since Isaac was a _caveman_ who didn’t have a phone with a camera, what the hell.

“It’s awful,” Chase negated, feeling awful and guilty and guiltily awful.

Isaac’s hair, it turned out, was a great deal curlier than expected when it was cut short. As a result, his hair was now a spectacularly uneven mess. In Chase’s defence, it _did_ look more interesting than the bowl cut had. No more Mr. Spock _or_ terrible Ringo Starr hair. Just something that made Isaac look like he’d been attacked by a lawnmower.

“It kind of is,” Isaac agreed, making a face. His nose wrinkled up in the most adorable way imaginable. “But it’s no big deal I can-”

“No, I’m fixing this!” Chase insisted.

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” Isaac said, putting Chase’s phone down and warily eyeing the scissors Chase was still holding.

“When I say I’m fixing it I don’t mean me physically fixing it,” Chase clarified, taking back his phone.

Isaac looked confused, but shrugged, apparently not too concerned about the state of his appearance.

Chase walked back over to Tarragon’s side of the road to make a phone call.

“Hey, I need a favour...” He said, explaining the situation. He watched in amusement as a rare customer appeared in front of the bakery booth. She seemed baffled by Isaac’s hair, but also was too polite to ask. Isaac didn’t seem to notice and just boxed up her order.

The call only took a few minutes, so Chase wandered back over not long after the customer disappeared.

He supposed Tarragon wouldn’t be pleased to learn how little time Chase was actually spending at her booth, but it wasn’t like there was anything left to do and the entire market was nearly empty of tourists that day.

“You could totally have overcharged her and she wouldn’t have even noticed, she was so distracted by your hair,” Chase told him very seriously, sitting back down with his back against the booth wall again. “It could be a new marketing strategy or something. Like how sex sells, only its people buying bread because your haircut baffles them.”

Chase didn’t need to be able see Isaac’s face to know the sort of look he was being given, so he quickly shut up.

Laura showed up twenty minutes later, shockingly early for her. She tended to get distracted and turn up much later than intended, unless it was for something really important. Like cake.

“Hello,” Chase said, bouncing to his feet and giving her a hug. Laura was big on hugs even if Chase was more ambivalent about them.

“Well it’s certainly artistic,” Laura commented of Isaac’s hair, foregoing introductions. She leant forward, like she wanted to examine his hair a bit closer, but Isaac sort of twitched backwards, looking uncomfortable.

“This is Laura,” Chase said quickly, “I asked her to fix your hair, since she’s cut mine before.”

“Oh, um. Nice to meet you.” Isaac fumbled for one of the million dish towels hanging around to wipe his sweaty palms. “I’m Isaac.” He held a hand up to shake. Laura took it but instead of shaking she began examining his palm.

“Goodness, you have a long heart line,” She said, “That means you fall in love easily... or that you’re practical in love.” She frowned slightly. “I can’t remember which.”

“T-thank... you?” Isaac said, looking rather uncomfortable.

“Laura’s into palmistry right now,” Chase explained, subtly nudging Laura into releasing Isaac’s hand, since he wasn’t looking any less uncomfortable as time passed. “It used to be hair dressing, and before that it was painting, which is how we became friends- I was volunteering at the after-school class she was taking. Until she got kicked out,” he added, grinning at her.

She pouted at him. “They were much too fussy about how to paint things _properly_. Art should be about expression”

“I think it was more about the fact that you kept painting on things that weren’t the canvas they gave you,” Chase suggested. She shook her head like Chase might as well have said the same thing.

“Anyways about Isaac’s hair...”

“I brought my own scissors,” Laura said, producing a pair from the pocket of her lime green shorts. They looked significantly sharper than the ones Chase had used, and more like they were actually intended for use on hair rather than flower stems. She circled around the side of the booth to get to Isaac.

“How would you like it to look?” She asked.

“Oh well... shorter?” Isaac said, making it sound like a question. “But well... I mean I don’t mind, really, I’d just like...” He shifted uncomfortably.

“How about you just make it look a bit less like he’s gotten attacked by a haunted pair of scissors,” Chase suggested, not missing the relieved look Isaac shot him.

Laura did some magic with her scissors and the end was result was a slightly uneven but significantly improved haircut.

“Thank you,” Isaac said, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, looking surprised not to have hair brush his fingers.

“Okay I can be seen with you in public again,” Chase declared. “For you, madam.” He produced a wilting pear blossom from behind his back.

Laura grinned and immediately tucked it behind her ear, where it clashed alarmingly with her neon green headband. “I should go, I’m making dinner for dad tonight.”

“Purple potatoes again?” Chase asked, having experienced Laura’s cooking more than once. _Experienced_ was the only real way to describe eating Laura’s cooking in any moderately polite way.

“I was thinking of carrot soup,” she said grinning, “He’s under the weather, so I don’t want to be too creative.”

“Probably a smart choice,” Chase said and then gave her a hug goodbye.

~

Not long after Laura left, Chase’s phone rang.

It was well past midday and he’d been at the market since opening, so he’d been expecting Tarragon for over an hour, having spent the entire time sitting in his usual spot against the bakery stall.

He was right in thinking that the call was from her. He was wrong in guessing it was her telling him she’d be on her way.

“Yeah, alright. Got it. I promise not to set anything on fire, cross my heart. See you tomorrow.” Chase hung up and then groaned loud enough to make Isaac look up from his sudoku puzzle.

“Guess who is here for the rest of the afternoon,” Chase said, answering Isaac’s unspoken question.

“Me,” Isaac said, completely straight faced.

Chase rolled his eye. “Yeah, but you work all day _every day_. I don’t know if my delicate constitution can handle working for this long, being subject to the whims of all these yuppies.”

“Chase, you haven’t had a customer in over two hours.”

Chase couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he settled for sighing dramatically. “Why doesn’t your gran make anyone else work out here anyways?” He asked, “It has to suck spending seven days a week out here.”

Isaac made a face. “I think she’s trying to punish me. She wanted me to apply for fall admission at the university.”

“Wait I thought you had decided to take a year out.” In Chase’s opinion, this was a pretty smart decision; whenever Isaac talked about school he sounded like he was still recovering from the amount of stress and anxiety it had caused him. His gran had had high standards; several academic clubs, 4.0 GPA, plus several shifts a week at the bakery.

Isaac shrugged. “I graduated a semester early in the winter, so according to her standards waiting until next year is too lazy.”

“So, she’s making you spend your entire summer out here so that you give in and go to school just to get away from this? That is almost diabolically passive aggressive.”

Isaac stifled a snort. “Well, it’s working, in any case.”

“What my sparkling personality isn’t enough to motivate you to work a zillion hours a week?”

“No, but it would be nice to sleep in past five am once in a while.”

Chase made a face. “Okay, seeing your point. You poor baby. Have a flower.” He reached up behind himself and blindly dropped a little sprig of purple heather on the Bakery counter.

“Thank- wait where was this?”

“In my hair.” Chase had been failing at making a flower crown earlier. He was really bored. He almost wanted some yuppie’s annoying dog to charge through the perennials, just for something to do.

“In your- of course it was.”

A couple hours passed, at one point a couple came and Chase sold them a cactus. It was the high point of his afternoon. Isaac was a bit busier, but not much. At least he finished his sudoku puzzle and started the crossword while Chase just lazed around without anything to keep him occupied.

Chase had once asked Tarragon what the point of having a market be open before tourist season, but she’d said that it was funded by the city council, so she wasn’t losing money, only time. Now that she had Chase, she was only losing _his_ time.

Eventually five o'clock crawled around and Chase gleefully started tossing plants back into the truck. He felt sunburnt, sweaty and gritty and he wanted like eight showers.

In the bakery stall, Isaac had sold the majority of the day’s goods, and he was packing up the leftovers into a little wagon, the type parents liked to haul kids around in.

“D’you want a ride home?” Chase asked. It was still hot as hell out, and he couldn’t even imagine hauling the wagon anywhere with that much weight dragging behind him.

“Thanks,” Isaac said with obvious relief. “Will the wagon fit in the truck?”

“I’ll make it fit,” Chase said.

They did, even if Isaac had to ride with a flat of tiny tomato plants on his lap.

Isaac shared a house with his gran near the top of the hill the town was built around, with a rather spectacular view of the lake.

“Thank you so much,” Isaac said for roughly the tenth time when they unloaded his wagon.

“I only did it for the baked goods,” Chase said around the two cookies he had shoved into his mouth. Day old or not they were _fantastic_.

Chase dropped the truck off at Tarragon’s, unloaded the godforsaken plants and nearly broke the sound barrier biking home to shower. He felt revolting. His skin was staging a protest at the combination of sweat, old sunscreen and potting soil, and felt like it was on the verge of just crawling off of his body in protest.

His hair was still damp when he had an argument with his dad that ended with him storming out of the house, the door slamming shut behind him.

As it inevitably always did, he ended up at Black’s. Luckily for his awful mood, this time he had both an obnoxiously pink cocktail and a best friend.

“Where the hell have you even been?” Chase asked between bitching about his dad and whining about working for free for Tarragon.

Leo shrugged. “Mom made me come with her to Italy unexpectedly to visit some of the great-aunts. One of them is guaranteed to kick the bucket soon and she wants in on the will.”

“What does she even want all that money for?” Chase asked making a face. The Hart family was decently well off, but were nowhere near the ‘oops I have to go to Europe’ level of wealth like the Blacks were. They gave new meaning to the term ‘disgustingly rich’.

“Bragging rights to all the relatives that don’t inherit.”

Leo ditched him around drink number four because he was a heartless bastard. Chase let his face rest on the sticky bar and wished Isaac was there.

“Alright there?” Leo’s brother’s boyfriend- Ray? Ralph?- asked Chase.

“No,” Chase said into the bar.

“Well, sit up, you don’t want to get a venereal disease from the counter, on top of everything else,” Tony’s saintly boyfriend said, and set down a fresh drink next to Chase’s face, because he was secretly an angel.

“Marry me,” Chase said, sitting up just enough to both keep his face off of the disgusting countertop and still maintain his petulant slouch.

“I might consider it,” Rodney- Ricky- Rowan! (Chase was stupidly pleased to finally remember) said kindly. His eyes were trained on whatever commotion was happening on the other end of the bar. There was always a commotion going on at Black’s, so Chase hadn’t paid it any attention, but turned to see what was happening.

Predictably, Tony was standing on a dangerously wobbly table, enthusiastically teaching a crowd of exceptionally drunk bikers how to do the Macarena. The old speakers weren’t even spewing out the Macarena song, just the usual mix of 80s college rock. It was one of the more ordinary things Tony had done while bored in his own bar.

“You could do so much better, mate,” Chase said to Rowan.

Rowan chuckled, and said, “Well, you don’t get to pick who you care about. Even if they do dumb things like get concussions while doing a fad dance from the nineties.”

Chase thought about Charles Sr. and how some stupid part of him was always still hurt when he yet again failed to live up to some unknown standard and his father gave him that look, both disappointed and unsurprised.

“You can say that again,” he sighed.

Across the bar, the table gave an almighty crack, a leg gave out, and Tony toppled off of it. The bikers all cheered and toasted each other.

Chase seriously needed new friends.

~

A week later and Chase was once again storming out of the house, not slamming the door, because he’d only just convinced his mom to go to sleep. She hadn’t recognized him, but had let him chivy her into brushing her teeth and climbing into bed anyways, making it a fairly decent evening. Until Charles Sr. had to go and be a prick, as usual.

It was nearly 2 AM and Chase was wired and unlikely to be able to sleep. He wasn’t in the mood for Black’s since Leo was probably off god knew where and Tony... Yeah, Chase didn’t want to go to Black’s. Tony kept _looking_ at him knowingly at it was driving Chase insane an inch at a time. Rowan’s saintly demeanour wasn’t enough to offset Tony Black of all people being knowing and sympathetic at him.

Feeling restless, he biked through the small downtown, enjoying the cool breeze the movement brought. Despite the sun having been down for several hours, the air still felt far too warm and humid, especially for the middle of June.

The streets were sparsely populated, a few groups of tipsy people making their way home, but it was no one Chase knew. He wasn’t sure if that was lucky or unlucky. Involving the Black Hawks in anything spelled danger, property damage and poor life choices, but at least they were distracting.

Somehow, he ended up outside Isaac’s house, all of the windows black. Because it was nearly 2 AM. Obviously.

The restless feeling settled, mostly. He just wanted to hang with Isaac, even if it was the middle of the night. Unfortunately, his cell phone was still not with him.

He considered the windows on the silent house. He knew which one was Isaac’s room; it had the potted plants on the sill and a little silver wind chime glowing in the moonlight. He could see that the window was open a crack too, but Chase didn’t think calling up to Isaac would go too well. Isaac had said more than once that his gran had ears like a bat.

He picked up a pebble from the gravel driveway and considered Isaac’s window.

When he threw it, it bounced off of the glass with a little ‘tink’.

Chase waited for a moment and then threw a second one.

He had just thrown the third one when Isaac’s face appeared in the window.

“What in god’s name are you doing?” Isaac hissed.

“I was trying to see if you were awake,” Chase replied. The third stone bounced off the window.

“I wasn’t- stop that you’ll break the glass!” Isaac said, voice going above a whisper as his irritation raised.

“Calm down, I’m like the master of small rocks, I wouldn’t do that. Come down here so it feels less like we’re re-enacting Romeo and Juliet. I look stupid in tights.”

Isaac disappeared briefly before returning to the window. “Chase, its 2AM.”

“Come hang out with me, I need someone to come skinny dipping with,” Chase said, making an excuse up on the spot. It was pretty gross and humid out, swimming would actually feel pretty good right then.

Since it was dark, Chase couldn’t actually tell, but he would have bet good money that Isaac was turning red.

“No!” Isaac hissed emphatically.

“Come on, it’ll be fun!”

“You’re going to get arrested for public indecency!”

Chase considered this, but shrugged and said, “I am _always_ indecent, baby.”

There was a solid thunk, like Isaac had smacked his head against the window frame out of sheer frustration.

“No.”

“Come on, I’ll leave my pants on.”

“That isn’t much better.”

“Come with me or I _won’t_ leave my pants on. If I get arrested it will be all your fault for being no fun.”

There was a very long pause. “Let me get my shoes.”

Isaac came out the front door not long after that, having changed out of his pajamas.

“Aw, I was hoping you’d have to climb out of your window or something,” Chase said, picking up his mom’s bike.

“I’m an adult. I can leave the house in the middle of the night if I want to,” Isaac told him, giving one of the upstairs windows a look. He paused. “Also, gran had an extra glass of wine before bed. Nothing will wake her up before nine.”

Chase laughed. “I guess it’s too much to expect you to climb out a window when there’s no way for you to get down either,” he sighed and started walking the bike down the driveway.

“Please tell me we aren’t actually going skinny dipping,” Isaac said, following alongside him.

“Nah, I just needed an excuse to get you to come outside.

“And public nudity was all you could think of?”

“Well I could still take my pants off if you really want to.”

“Please don’t.”

They turned a corner and were on one of the main streets. It was invitingly empty, reminding Chase of when he and Leo were kids and would get in trouble for having races against each other on the road outside the Black’s house.

“It’s too bad you don’t have a bike,” Chase said, “Then we could race.”

“No, we couldn’t.”

Chase raised an eyebrow. “There are like zero cars out right now. I’m fairly certain racing wouldn’t get either of us killed.”

“No, I- I never learned how. To ride a bike, I mean.”

Chase stopped dead in his tracks. “Seriously? That’s like a fundamental part of being a kid.”

Isaac shrugged, looking off to the side. “Gran was too old for that sort of thing when she was raising me, and I had other things I had to learn...”

“Oh right, being the family heir and all that. Well it’s never too late to learn.”

Isaac looked up, less embarrassed and more concerned. “You aren’t going to teach me.” It was less a question and more of a statement.

Chase pursed his lips, thinking. “Yeah that would be a pretty terrible idea. Better idea, hop on.” He seated himself on the bike and patted the handlebars invitingly.

“What?” Isaac took a step closer, tilting his head as he considered the bike.

“I’ll take you for a ride,” Chase explained, forcing himself not to waggle his eyebrows and turn it into a double entendre, since making Isaac blush was fun and all, but getting slapped really wasn’t. “It’ll be almost like the real thing.”

“What if we fall?”

“Don’t even worry about it, I’m basically a pro.”

“You said the same thing before cutting my hair.”

“And I _fixed_ it, didn’t I?” Isaac still didn’t look convinced. “Come on, live a little. I’ll give you a prize.”

Isaac smiled at him. “What, more flowers? You do that all the time anyways. It isn’t much of a prize.”

Chase thought quickly. “ _Special_ flowers. Ones that aren’t from the discard bins. I’ll even pay Tarragon for them and everything.”

“Oh well, in that case...”

It took a bit of doing to get Isaac seated on the handlebars, with Chase bracing the bike upright and the wicker basket constantly getting in the way. Eventually, though, Isaac was precariously perched on the handlebars, the basket digging into his thighs and they were ready.

“Off we go!” Chase said once Isaac was clutching the handlebars with white-knuckled fingers.

He started off slowly, just getting enough momentum to keep them upright without wobbling, but once Isaac relaxed the tiniest bit, Chase pedaled faster.

Dark houses flashed by on either side of them, the road gradually sloping downward, making them go even faster.

Chase whooped and pedaled harder.

“Let go,” Chase suggested, yelling in Isaac’s ear.

“I’ll fall!” Isaac protested, laughing.

“One hand! Chase countered. “You won’t fall, just trust me!”

They were nearing the end of the road, where it flattened out and met another road, forming a T.

Isaac glanced at him over his shoulder, face unreadable, then looked forward again and lifted one hand off the handlebars.

“Yeah!” Chase yelled in his ear and Isaac yelled with him. Isaac raised his free hand above his head, even as they picked up a little more speed.

“Hold on and lean to your left,” Chase instructed as they came to the intersection. They both leaned and the bike easing around the corner without a hitch.

They whipped around the corner, going faster as the street became even steeper than before.

“Oh my god!” Isaac yelled, sounding not scared, but amazed.

Then they were emerging from the residential part of town into downtown, the houses giving way to storefronts and bars, illuminated by streetlamps. In the better light, Chase could see how the breeze was flipping Isaac’s loose curls nearly upright, his thin t-shirt flapping around his waist and his surprisingly firm biceps.

They went around two more corners before they came to the boardwalk on the edge of the lake and Chase gently slowed them to a halt. He held the bike still as Isaac awkwardly slid off, shorts catching on the basket. Isaac didn’t seem to care, grinning widely, his hair a gloriously windswept disaster.

“That was amazing!” Isaac said breathlessly.

The breeze off the water made the air much more bearable, and it ruffled Isaac’s already ridiculously messy hair. There weren’t as many streetlights down here as there had been up on the main street, but even in the dim light, Chase could still see the wide grin Isaac wore, how his eyes crinkled a little and how his hands were still shaking slightly from the adrenaline.

Chase abruptly realized he really wanted to kiss Isaac. Which was a peculiar feeling. He’d always thought Isaac was adorable and cute: the constant blushing, general awkwardness and very rare pouts had seen to that. But there, in the half-light on the boardwalk, the shadows made Isaac’s cheekbones stand out, making him look like the adult he really was.

Chase wasn’t one to over analyze his feelings.

So, he leant over the handlebars of the bike and kissed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flower Meanings:  
> Baby’s Breath: innocence  
> Lilacs (white): youthful innocence  
> Wisteria: welcoming  
> Chrysanthemums (white): honesty  
> Chrysanthemums (yellow): precious one  
> Bluebells: constancy, openness  
> Carnations (pink): a mother’s love  
> Rosemary: remembrance  
> Windflowers: fading hope  
> Pear Blossom: lasting friendship  
> Heather (purple): admiration


	2. Chapter 2

It was another glorious day in tourist hell. The sun was shining, the flowers were blooming, the early-rising yoga yuppies were happily trading gluten-free vegan recipes on the corner.

Chase didn’t even care that they’d let their kids run wild while they chatted, knocking over a bunch of Tarragon’s bitty potted plants and were getting potting soil absolutely everywhere.

Today was fantastic and nothing was going to ruin that fact; not bratty kids, not the fact that Tarragon was once again making him work the entire day at the booth, not even the fact that he’d gotten maybe four hours of sleep that night (well, morning).

As usual, Isaac was already at his booth when Chase arrived, but his eyes were closed, chin precariously balanced on one hand. Because he was a bit of a jerk, if Chase weren’t so infatuated with Isaac’s face, he’d have been tempted to poke him just to see if he’d topple over or jerk awake first.

Despite clearly being almost entirely asleep, Chase waved at him anyways, just because he could, and, whistling obnoxiously, he went about setting up all of the plants with a grin on his face. Having done this roughly a million times, it only took about five minutes of work.

It was a weekday and only roughly the crack of dawn, so even the yuppies on the corner were more interested in the fair-trade coffee booth than plants or bread, so once set up was done, Chase immediately ditched Tarragon’s booth to go see Isaac.

Because he could, he planted a big sloppy kiss on Isaac’s forehead, grinning when he jerked awake and nearly jumped out of his skin and off of his stool.

“Good morning!” Chase said cheerily.

Isaac gave him a grumpy look. It was adorable, likely because everything Isaac did was adorable. Chase was pretty sure Isaac could commit cold-blooded murder and Chase would think it was adorable, though he was extra adorable this morning with his hair all rumpled and face still sleepy looking.

Still though, he kissed Isaac’s forehead a second time, a bit less sloppily and grinned when Isaac went from grumpy to pink and faintly embarrassed in less than five seconds.

“Morning,” Isaac replied, rubbing a hand over his face roughly.

“Still sleepy?” Chase asked, unashamedly staring at Isaac with what had to be an outstandingly soppy look on his face. If Leo saw him like this he’d probably try to kick Chase in the shins and then miss because was laughing too hard. Chase found that he didn’t even care.

“Unlike some people, I can’t simply show up at 8:30, twenty minutes after waking up,” Isaac said wryly. “So I only got about two hours of sleep before I had to get up and go to the bakery.”

“Sorry,” Chase said, not actually feeling very sorry. Well, he was sorry that he’d prevented Isaac from getting much sleep, but he wasn’t sorry that he’d gotten to spend time together in the early hours of the morning when the world felt hushed and still and like they’d been the only people alive on the planet.

Isaac smiled, “I’m not complaining. Well maybe I am a little, since Gran made a deal with the coffee booth down the row and we can’t sell coffee if they can’t sell baked goods.”

Chase was horrified. He’d nearly slept through his alarm that morning and had still found time to swing by the good Starbucks after getting Tarragon’s truck and loading it up before racing down to the market. (While there were virtually no customers this early, Tarragon was a tiny bit omniscient and always knew when Chase was lazy and didn’t set up the booth exactly at the hour he was supposed to)

“You poor, undercaffinated child,” Chase said, “I’m fixing that.”

Isaac laughed, “It’s really okay, Chase, I’ll-”

“Nope, fixing it,” Chase interrupted, “Make sure none of the rugrats steal any of the plants again, okay?”

“Chase-!”

“You’ll be fine!” Chase assured him, then trotted down to the fair-trade coffee booth. He got himself a coffee because a day could never have too much caffeine when tourists were involved and dumped a whole bunch of milk and no sugar in it, since he liked his coffee milky and bitter. Like his soul. Isaac, though, was probably the sweetest person alive who had ever dealt with grumpy customers and deserved something equally sweet. Also, Chase had seen him sneaking treats out of the reject bin often enough to know he had a sweet tooth. So, he got him the most ridiculous thing off the chalkboard menu. He accomplished this by saying to the harried looking woman behind the counter, ‘give me the most over-the-top sugary thing you can make’.

The morning rush had died down a bit, so with input from her coworkers and Chase, it ended up being a bit of a contest, and involved nearly all of the syrups behind the counter, chocolate sprinkles and a dash of coffee. Chase couldn’t put a lid on it without the small mountain of whipped cream smooshing out between the cup and the lid, so he very carefully walked back, dodging two tourists, a small child and a dog and deposited it in front of Isaac triumphantly.

“You didn’t have to- wait what is that?” Isaac eyed the cup suspiciously.

“Everything,” Chase replied, which was kind of accurate given all that had gone into it. “Sugar for my sugar,” he added when Isaac continued to look skeptical instead of amused like Chase had intended.

Isaac snorted, and then spluttered helplessly since he’d just taken a sip.

“There’s no way you’ll feel tired with all that sugar,” Chase explained and handed him a napkin.

“Well, thank you,” Isaac said, smiling a bit helplessly. “I do feel a little bad though, that place charges highway robbery for everything.”

“Nah, don’t thank me, thank Leo, it was his money. I just did the walking and ordering,” Chase replied. Given that he was by and large an adult with no income, Chase was probably the most broke person ever who was both legally an adult and also too proud to ask his asshole dad for money.

So he and Leo had a bit of a system. Leo, being disgustingly wealthy, would periodically “forget” his wallet with Chase and Chase would return it to him later, slightly emptier. It was a good system, and one that didn’t involve either of them having to bring up feelings or anything else they were both bad at and rather embarrassed about.

“If I ever meet him I’ll have to do that then,” Isaac said.

Chase shrugged. “You’ll probably meet him eventually, the whole accidentally blowing up a greenhouse thing is pretty much last week’s news, so he’ll stay in town for more than a few days soonish, if only to laugh at me in my indentured servitude. And me wearing a smock.” Leo has nearly had a fit every time he’d seen Chase in his Starbucks apron when he’d worked there, so seeing Chase not only working for free but also in a hideous used-to-be-pink-but-now-is-covered-in-plant-shit smock with Tarragon’s logo on the front would be an irresistible draw for his asshole friends.

“Hm,” Isaac said, not looking terribly enthused.

If a bunch of moms hadn’t shown up, Chase would have explained to Isaac that Leo and his friends normally weren’t that bad, exploding greenhouse aside, and that the whole cult thing was really a misunderstanding starting with the fact that Macnair’s dad was the police chief and was pretty darn displeased his only son ran around with a pack of hooligans who occasionally did ill-advised things like day drink. And blow up greenhouses. There was also the whole Tom Hopper thing, but he’d been a total sociopath and had been carted off to a facility before much could happen. At the time, Chase had been pretty relieved; not only had Tom been uncomfortably racist, that snake tattoo had been downright _creepy_. But he’d also been eerily charismatic when he wanted, and awfully convincing, and that was how Chase, Leo and the others had inadvertently sort of joined a cult without realizing it. Luckily, without Tom to be an even worse influence than they were to begin with, the Black Hawks had quickly returned to their regular levels of recklessness rather than the Actual Dangerous shit Tom had been suggesting.

But he couldn’t take the time to explain all that, since there were like four moms and a billion kids, which was generally a sign of the hordes descending, so Chase begrudgingly went back to his side of the street where he was immediately accosted by a man very deeply concerned about the exact origin of the seeds Tarragon used in her planting.

It was because of all of this that Chase couldn’t ambush Isaac with flowers until during the usual lunchtime drag, where all the yuppies inexplicably had other places to be, probably yoga classes or whatever the trendy not-exercise was that month.

“For you,” he said, setting the flowers down on the counter with a flourish. Isaac, who had run out of customers much sooner than Chase had, and who had already pulled out a beat-up novel and was dozing into the middle of it, startled.

“Thanks,” he said, face going through the usual pattern of surprise, mild embarrassment and quiet delight. “What’s all this for, though?”

“I told you last night that I’d give you non-reject flowers if you got on the bike,” Chase reminded him and then, after a microsecond of hesitation, pecked Isaac on the lips. They hadn’t really talked about what all this meant last night, or that morning.

On the boardwalk, they’d ended up making out a bit, Isaac’s hands clutching at his shoulders and pressing up on his tiptoes to reach, and Chase had carded both hands through Isaac’s stupidly soft hair- and they had only had stopped when Isaac had turned his head to the side for a jaw-cracking yawn. Then Chase had taken him home, feeling a bit like a jerk since he knew Isaac was up before dawn every day of the week and was clearly exhausted. When they had gotten back up the hill to Isaac’s, he had been nearly asleep on his feet. Chase had propped his mom’s bike against the fence and he’d all but carried Isaac in through the kitchen door and upstairs to his room, and then had eased him onto his bed. Isaac had leant up to kiss him on the cheek sleepily, and had been snoring before Chase could even react.

Isaac glanced down at the flowers again, then back up at Chase.

Chase had gone with honeysuckle, purple lilac and a single gardenia since they were kind of expensive and Leo’s money only went so far. He’d thought about adding a jonquil, but even if Isaac didn’t know the meaning behind it, it still made Chase feel a bit too exposed in the emotions department. It also would have looked a bit out of place, aesthetically speaking, which was totally why he’d decided to not include one.

“Thanks,” Isaac said and stuck them in a glass vase that had appeared in the bakery booth one day, entirely just for that purpose. Chase thought he might be spoiling Isaac with the whole flower thing all the time, but he figured someone needed to spoil Isaac, so it should be him.

Chase couldn’t stop grinning for the rest of his shift, even when a kid kicked him in the shin and then he got yelled at by the kid’s mom for ‘scaring him’. He knew he had to be kind of terrifying looking, since when he dropped off her truck, Tarragon frowned and told him to get out of the sun before he got heat stroke, but Chase couldn’t find it in himself to care.

~

“What?” Chase said dumbly.

Tarragon frowned at him and said impatiently, “You’re finished your hours. Doing all of those full day shifts filled them out quicker than I’d initially anticipated when we set this up.”

“So, I’m done…?” Chase said, a little blankly. He didn’t want to be done. He didn’t really enjoy working at Tarragon’s, it was worse than working at Starbuck’s where he’d gotten free drinks, tips and an actual salary. But he didn’t have an Isaac there. He’d put up with constant sunburns and no air-conditioning if it meant getting to see Isaac’s shy smiles that cracked into enormous grins every time Chase caught his eye across the road.

“I just said that,” Tarragon replied, looking unimpressed but also like she was worried Chase _actually_ gotten sunstroke.

“So, you want me to quit?” Chase asked, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“You’ve finished your community service hours, so you don’t need to work for me anymore.” Tarragon was beginning to look more concerned than frustrated. “Have you gotten heat stroke? I’ve told you before to make sure you stay hydrated and to stay out of the sun, that marketplace is like an oven.”

“No, I’m fine,” Chase said automatically even though he really wasn’t fine. No more Tarragon’s meant no more Isaac. Sure, he could hang around the marketplace being a pest, but he wouldn’t have an excuse not to get a job, and Isaac never had any free time, so if they didn’t work next to each other…

“Can I just keep working for you?” Chase asked, the solution to this problem suddenly seeming obvious to him.

“Are you sure you don’t have heat stroke?” Tarragon asked, placing one dirty hand on Chase’s forehead.

Chase quickly brushed her aside. “I’m fine. I just… I’d like to keep working for you, if that’s alright with you. I really, really like working with plants.”

Tarragon didn’t look convinced. Even with Isaac’s help it was pretty obvious that Chase did not have a passion for plants.

“I’ll work for free?” Chase tried hopefully.

Tarragon looked like she wanted to check his temperature again, but after a moment she shrugged. “Alright, but you can’t come complaining to me about your ‘indentured servitude’ again when you’ve asked for this.”

Chase grinned, heart feeling lighter. “Thanks so much!”

Tarragon shook her head and shoved another tray of tomato plants at him to load into the truck.

~

It had been unfailingly sunny day in and day out for as long as Chase had been stuck with at Tarragon’s booth in, so Chase wasn’t too surprised when the weather finally turned. He was surprised, however, that they seemed to be getting the last few months’ worth of rain in the span of about twenty minutes.

It had been a tiny bit cloudy when he’d arrived that morning, but nothing unusual. While he’d been dealing with a flat of plants that someone’s dog had attacked, the sky must have clouded over with intent because the next thing he knew, the heavens positively opened up.

Big, fat droplets of water pounded into the pavement so hard that Chase couldn’t even hear Isaac swearing as he rushed to keep the bread rack dry. Thunder crackled overhead, close enough that it was deafening. Before his eyes, water formed fast moving rivers even as Chase hurried to move the more delicate plants under the little canvas roof of the booth. The rain fell so hard that it washed dirt out of some of the pots, covering everything in the vicinity in potting soil, including Chase.

He’d just finished cramming plants into the last bit of space under the canvas roof and he was thinking of washing the soil off his hands so he could help Isaac finish draping plastic over his display cases, when a police officer showed up, holding a battered umbrella over his head. The rain was hitting the ground so hard that it was splashing upwards, making his attempt to stay dry effectively useless.

“Sorry folks, but I’m going to have to ask you to pack your things up,” he said, having to shout to be heard over the rain and the rushing water on the ground. “The storm drains have been nearly filled, and this area is in danger of a flash flood.”

He didn’t need to tell Chase twice. He packed the back of the truck up twice as fast as he had ever done before, slogging back and forth from Tarragon’s truck and back to the booth through water that was rapidly growing deeper, enough that his feet were entirely underwater.

As soon as the last flat of marigolds was crammed into the truck, he finally got to go to Isaac. The bakery booth had fared better than Tarragon’s, due to its plywood sides and actual roof instead of a sheet of canvas, but Isaac was still soaked, his hair plastered to his head.

“Do you want a ride home?” Chase asked, raising his voice to be heard over the rushing water.

“Yes, thank you!” Isaac shouted back, not pausing in packing up all the baked goods not yet sold.

They managed to fit everything into Tarragon’s truck, though it was a tighter fit than when Chase had driven Isaac home at the end of the day the last time, since they hadn’t sold as much. They both piled into the cab of the truck, soaked to the skin and shivering. Chase cranked the heat up, but didn’t bother taking the truck out of park.

“You want me to take you up to your house?” Chase asked. It was barely past noon, much earlier than Isaac ever left the marketplace. Maybe if he was lucky, Isaac could put off work for a little bit and they could go find something fun to do. Chase took in Isaac’s omnipresent dark circles under his eyes and revised that. Maybe Isaac could put off work and take a nap and Chase could lounge around in the same vicinity of him and enjoy being lazy.

“Yes, that would be great,” Isaac agreed, rubbing his hands together in front of the heater. Then he frowned. “No, wait. Gran’s not at the bakery today, she’s spending the day on accounting. She’d just make me go to the bakery for a shift, probably.”

Isaac, as far as Chase could tell, spent all of his time either at the marketplace booth, at one of the two actual bakeries baking things to take to the marketplace booth, or sleeping. Yeah, there was no way he was taking Isaac to see his gran when he had a good reason to finally play hooky.

“Screw that,” Chase agreed, then paused, trying to think of what they could do. “I’ll drop off all the plants at Tarragon’s, and we can go do something. She won’t mind me borrowing her truck,” he told Isaac and threw the truck into gear. It was true, probably. Or at least what Tarragon didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt her. He had enough of Leo’s money to refill her gas tank anyways.

Isaac gave him a look, like he knew what Chase was thinking, but nodded in agreement.

They hustled the plants into Tarragon’s greenhouse, though there was no sign of the woman herself. While busy with this, Chase pondered on what they could do before Isaac had to go to the bakery for the late shift he usually put in after dinner, workaholic that he was.

A sharp breeze blew up from the river at the edge of Tarragon’s property, making both of them shiver. Isaac sneezed loudly.

“Right, dry clothes first,” Chase declared and they climbed back into the truck.

It was a Saturday, so his father wouldn’t be at work and was probably at home, but Chase had nearly a decade’s worth of experience sneaking in and out of the house under his belt. He was pretty sure he could grab some dry clothing and maybe a few towels without anyone being the wiser. Still, he made sure to park the truck at the end of the long driveway rather than drive up to the house.

“Where are we?” Isaac asked, peering over Chase’s shoulder at the high fence and hedge that surrounded the Hart family estate. Chase was sure glad his parents didn’t bother locking the gate like they had when he was in high school; scaling the fence had been a literal pain in the ass.

“My parent’s place,” Chase replied, “Don’t worry, we’ll go somewhere else. I just wanted to grab some dry clothes. You can stay here, I’ll only be a second,” he added, when Isaac made to climb out.

“I don’t mind coming in,” Isaac replied.

Chase shook his head. “Nobody wants to meet my dad, even when he’s not being all Public Face. Seriously, I’ll be right back.”

Isaac looked a bit confused, since Chase hadn’t ever gone into detail about what an asshole his father was, but nodded nonetheless.

Chase left the keys in the truck so Isaac could leave the heat on, and slipped through the gate.

In all honesty, sneaking into the house was the easy part; it was the getting from the hedge over to the house that was much harder, especially in broad daylight. Or at least, relative daylight, since it was still pretty gloomy and dark out with the heavy clouds hanging in the sky. The yard was mostly empty and the house had a fuckton of large windows on all sides, so Chase would just have to hope his father wasn’t in a looking out the window sort of mood.

They hadn’t spoken since their last argument three days previous. Chase wasn’t particularly in the mood for another one.

Luck was on his side and he got inside through the kitchen door no problem. He was busily congratulating himself on his own stealth and taking several towels from the linen closet, when he turned around and bumped into both his mother and an expensive vase on a side table.

Chase dropped all his towels and nearly fell over trying to stop the vase from crashing to the floor.

“Sorry mom-” he started to say quietly.

“Shhh!” She hissed, holding one finger up to her lips. Her other arm held Chase’s old laptop to her chest. She glanced over at the stairs and frowned.

Chase nodded and carefully picked up the towels.

“Lucy- is that you?” Chase’s father called down from upstairs. “Where are you hiding? It’s time to come out, okay?”

Chase’s mom shook her head, backing up, looking anxious.

Chase sighed and gently steered her towards his room. His father wouldn’t think to check there, at least not right away.

“It’s okay, mom,” he told her quietly and smiled in response when she gave him a grateful look and patted his hand before shutting the door to Chase’s room. “It’s just me, dad,” he said more loudly.

Charles Sr. came down the stairs, already frowning. He was wearing a suit even though it was a Saturday and Chase knew he hadn’t been to his office that day. His father was always a total tool, but some days he just made it all the more blatantly obvious.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Charles Sr. crossed his arms over his chest, moustache bristling. Not a good sign for Chase wanting to just get out of the house with minimal discussion. That was his father’s expression for when he was working his way up to a good, long, excruciating lecture.

“The marketplace was flooded and had to be evacuated. Tarragon sent me home to get dry clothes before I spend the afternoon in her compost heap. Not sure why I need clean clothes for that,” Chase grumbled, wrinkling his nose.

“Well you can help me find your mother first.”

“Tarragon wants me back right away. Just leave mom alone, she’ll come out when she’s ready.”

“She hasn’t had lunch yet, and she didn’t want breakfast.”

“Newsflash: she isn’t a child, she’ll eat when she wants to. She doesn’t need to eat when you want her to eat.”

“We can’t let her act like this all the time.”

“Act how? Like she’s mentally ill? Because, guess what! She is and that isn’t going away!” Chase snapped, forgetting to keep his voice quiet.  He immediately regretted shouting that. There was no way his mother hadn’t heard his outburst.

There was a soft thump from Chase’s room, like something had been dropped.

Chase looked from the door to his room to his father’s face already purpling with rage. He was done with dealing with all of this. He turned on his heel and left the house without another word.

He got about two steps outside before he remembered what he’d come to do in the first place.

“Damnit.”

There was no way he was going back inside and dealing with that mess. Grumbling, he circled the house and went to the side of the house. The laundry room was on the second floor, but it was little work climbing up the terrace and shimmying in through the hallway window. Another thing he’d done plenty of times in his misbegotten youth.

He’d done laundry the day before and had been too lazy to do any folding, so he quickly changed out of his wet clothing into a dry set. Not wearing soggy jeans was heaven. He grabbed a wrinkled but clean t-shirt and a pair of shorts that would probably stay on Isaac’s narrower hips, along with a windbreaker and a pair of flip flops he’d left up there for some reason. Isaac insisted on wearing close-toed shoes to work every day, even though he was only selling food, not making it and it was normally a million degrees out. It made Chase’s feet sweat in sympathy. But his shoes had to be completely soaked from the rain, so Isaac would have to deal with flip flops. Chase wasn’t going back downstairs, even for Isaac’s comfort. Mostly because Chase knew himself better than he liked to admit, and in his mood he’d probably end up punching Charles Sr. in the face, which would only further upset his mother.

Getting back out the window and down to the ground without dropping the clothing or towels was a bit more awkward, especially since he had nothing to carry it all in. Still, it wasn’t long before he was getting back into the truck and startling Isaac who was looking intently at his phone.

“Everything okay?” Isaac asked, setting his phone down to accept the towel Chase thrust at him. “I was about to call.”

Chase briefly considered regaling him with the whole ordeal but decided against it. They were going to go have fun no matter what, Isaac didn’t need Chase whining about his father’s normal dickish behaviour.

“Nah, it just took a while to find where all the clean towels were. I swear there’s a clean towel stealing gremlin in that house. Hope the clothing fits.”

Isaac stopped toweling his hair off to look at the pile of clothing on the seat between them.

“Oh! You didn’t have to. Thank you though.” Isaac pulled off his shirt and let it fall to the floor of the cab with a dull ‘thwap’.

“Yes, I did,” Chase replied, looking away since he figured making out with someone didn’t mean you could watch them change like a creepy creep. “Can’t take you dancing with you wearing wet clothing.”

“What?” Isaac asked, laughing. The sound of rustling clothing stopped, so Chase figured it was safe to look. He laughed when he did: Isaac’s hair was starting to dry, almost entirely made up of uneven cowlicks.

“We’re going dancing,” Chase explained. He didn’t even try to resist the temptation to ruffle Isaac’s hair and grinned at the outraged sound he got in response. Isaac frowned adorably and retaliated by tickling Chase’s sides. Unfortunately for Chase, he was absurdly ticklish and couldn’t squirm away in the confines of the cab of the truck.

“Stop!” He laughed and accidentally banged his elbow on the horn so hard it went off. They both froze, staring at each other. Isaac cracked first and collapsed into a heap of giggles, his head landing on Chase’s shoulder. This put his adorably fluffy hair right in front of Chase’s face. He really should have learned his lesson the first time...

“It’s a little early for the club,” Isaac pointed out dryly several minutes later when he’d successfully beaten Chase back a second time.

“Please, I meant actual dancing,” Chase replied, a bit breathlessly. “Besides, we don’t even _have_ a club here.” It was true. Black’s Bar was probably the closest thing to a club in town, which spoke volumes about the sorry excuse for a night life their town boasted and less about Black’s bumping party vibe.

“What kind of dancing is _actual_ dancing?” Isaac persisted.

“You will find out soon enough, young grasshopper,” Chase replied and threw the truck back into gear.

~

The seniors’ center wasn’t too far away, so it was only a matter of minutes before they were pulling into the parking lot. The rain had finally stopped, the sun peeking through the clouds, though the deep puddles on the ground remained a testament to how strong the storm had been.

Isaac gave Chase a skeptical look, but gamely followed him inside.

“Chase!” Andie Thompson greeted from the welcome desk. “It’s been ages since you’ve been by!” she mock-frowned. “I’m insulted you haven’t had time to see your favourite aunt.”

Chase shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry, Andie, I’ve been busy this summer.”

“It’s okay, I’m only kidding” she laughed, “I’ve barely seen Dora since school let out, I know how busy you kids can get. You’re just in time for the class though, you and your friend can go on in.”

Chase thanked her and tugged Isaac down the hall to the main activity room.

“That woman was your aunt?” Isaac asked.

Chase shook his head. “Nah. I mean, we’re probably related somehow, all the old families in town are, but she was friends with my mom ages ago. Her daughter is only a few years older, so mom would take me over there for the day sometimes.”

“Right and we’re at a seniors’ center, why exactly?”

“Swing dancing!” Chase exclaimed and pushed the door open a bit too hard, making it bounce off the inside wall.

The other occupants looked up at the sound, but only smiled indulgently and nodded at Chase when he came in.

“I don’t know...” Isaac said, looking apprehensively, “I’ve never tried. I’d rather not make a fool of myself.”

Chase laughed. “Please, Laura and I used to come all the time, and despite our best efforts we discovered you can’t make up for incoordination with sheer enthusiasm. If no one made fun of us for that, you’ll be fine even if you knock every other person on the floor over. Believe me, it’s already been done. More than once. I promise to try not to step on your feet too much, though.”

Despite himself, Isaac laughed. “Okay, okay,” Isaac said. They kicked their sandals off and Isaac followed him hand in hand to the center of the room.

Half an hour later, Chase stopped them both, not caring that another couple nearly crashed into them.

“Okay so why weren’t you too excited to dance exactly?” He demanded.

Isaac turned a bit pink. “We had lessons in school when we hosted an interschool Olympics. I got made fun of for thinking it was fun and practicing on my own.”

Chase frowned. “Okay, it’s official, not only was everyone you went to school with jerks, but they were also all also complete morons.”

“Chase,” Isaac laughed, “Not all of them were Gino Vialas...”

“Nope, not listening to this nonsense. Come on Fred Astaire, we have another twenty minutes left for you to show me how it's done.”

~

Chase pretty much had to pry the woman who taught the class away from Isaac, she was so excited to have a student who actually could dance.

“We’ll come back some time,” Chase promised. He’d make it happen too, somehow. Maybe he could purposefully flood the marketplace again so Isaac could get another day off. Or he could make Leo buy all of the bakery booth’s goods so Isaac would have nothing left to sell and theoretically could go home. It wasn’t like that sort of thing would even dent the ridiculous Black family fortune. Chase was pretty sure Leo owned shoes more expensive than the bakery’s entire stock. Also, Leo would surely also appreciate mass quantities of fresh scones, though maybe even he would balk at that much baked goods all at once.

Somehow, Chase would have to make it work, because it was clear Isaac had enjoyed the class immensely; he was still grinning, face pink and slightly sweaty from exertion.

“What do you want to do now?” Chase asked as they walked out into the parking lot.

“I don’t know- oh hold on,” Isaac said and pulled out his ancient cellphone. Chase had fiddled with it a week previous and managed to get it to make the Jaws theme sound whenever Isaac’s gran texted him. Isaac had scolded him, but had looked terribly entertained. Tellingly, he also hadn’t changed it back to the old ringtone.

“Someone messed up inventory at the main bakery. Gran’s going to go yell at people, which will probably take all afternoon once she gets going,” Isaac said, eyes on the tiny screen. “Glad it isn’t me this time,” he added, snapping the phone shut. It still kind of baffled Chase that Isaac owned an honest-to-god flip phone. It was a miracle in of itself that he’d managed to get the Jaws theme on it at all.

“So, your house is empty?” Chase asked as innocently as he could. Which was to say, not very innocent at all. In his defence, Isaac was very cute all the time and Chase had recently discovered that he could also be _very_ attractive in the right circumstances.

“Yeah,” Isaac replied, looking a bit apprehensive.

“Excellent. Nap time then,” Chase decided and unlocked Tarragon’s truck.

“What?” Isaac slipped trying to climb in, so Chase leaned over the seat to grab his wrist and help haul him in.

“Nap time,” Chase repeated with a grin. “I mean I can just drop you off, if you want, but I’m kind of beat too. Swing dancing is tiring when you’ve got a partner who can actually swing,” he added with a grin.

Isaac rolled his eyes, smiling. “I don’t see what you and that woman were fussing about, I’m nothing special.”

“You stop that right now, you’re awesome. You are the Fred Astaire of the 21st century. And also very good at not stepping on people’s toes. Now yes or no to nap time?” Chase asked and yawned abruptly, jaw cracking quietly. He’d spent the night at Black’s again, though he’d only had one pink cocktail thing and had fallen asleep on Leo’ bed, since he was off god knows where doing god knows what as usual. It had been better than sleeping on the booth seats in the actual bar, but Chase still felt a bit short on sleep. He was beginning to think he’d need to start sneaking home after arguments with his father just so he could enjoy commodities like clean clothing and his own bed. Charles Sr. was spending more time than usual at his office, so Chase probably could get away with it. He just hated feeling like a teenager again, especially when he knew he was right, even if there was nothing he could do about it.

“Oh. A nap would be nice,” Isaac said. “I’m almost looking forward to September when the marketplace closes. Even if I’ll have to go back to work at the actual bakery, at least I can take shifts that start after 6 AM.”

Chase made a face. “You are a much stronger man than I. I’d’ve already cracked and just done what your gran wants just so I could get a decent sleep.”

“Gran always did say I was too stubborn for my own good. Mom was like that too, apparently.”

Chase took a moment to consider his words before speaking. He wasn’t the most tactful person or most sensitive, but even he knew Isaac’s parents was a touchy subject.

“You’ve mentioned that your gran raised you. What happened to your parents?” he asked gently, curiosity overriding his common sense as it often did.

Isaac was silent for a long moment, then switched off the barely audible radio. “There was some sort of bank robbery- in the city, not here,” he added, like the distinction was important somehow. “Mom died when one of the men grabbed a kid and mom tried to stop him. He panicked and shot her. Dad was trying to convince the robbers to let paramedics in to help mom, since the police were already outside. Something happened, we think dad was trying to get everyone to calm down, but he got hurt too. By the time the police and everyone got inside it was too late for most of the people that were hurt.”

Without even the radio playing, the inside of the truck was dead silent when Isaac stopped speaking.

Softly, Chase said, “I’m so sorry, Isaac.”

It was kind of a dumb thing to say, but Chase couldn’t think of what else he could say.

Isaac shrugged, eyes trained down at his knees. “I don’t remember them much, I was five when this all happened. My uncle says I’m a lot like both of them. I think they were pretty good people though. We still get cards every Christmas from the kid my mom saved.”

“They’d be proud of you, I think,” Chase told him, sneaking a glance at Isaac. He didn’t look sad, which Chase was grateful for, just solemn.

“For what? Driving my gran crazy and not wanting the family business dad spent his whole life building up?” Isaac’s words were bitter, but his voice sounded more defeated than anything.

Abruptly, Chase decided this conversation couldn’t take place with him focusing any of his attention on the road and not on Isaac. He pulled over the first spot he didn’t think would cause an accident or get him a ticket and put the truck into park.

“Chase, what-”

Chase unbuckled his seatbelt and turned sideways in his seat so he could look at Isaac properly.

“If your parents are half as decent people as they sound like, they’d be proud of you. Parents want their kids to do whatever makes them happy, not what makes the parents happy, I think. Or at least, they should.”

Charles Sr. had never expressed a desire for Chase to follow in his footsteps, but he suspected that was because it had been clear since Chase was a child that he wasn’t suited to any sort of government job, rather than Charles Sr wanting him to go his own way. His mom had encouraged him doing art back in high school, before she’d started having more incidents, at least.

Isaac frowned. “Chase- your dad, you don’t really talk about him but...”

He hadn’t meant to not talk with Isaac about his family life, they talked about nearly everything else, but Chase just hadn’t wanted Isaac to get tangled up in the shitshow that was the ever present and ongoing Hart family drama. Frankly, Chase would prefer to not be tangled up in it himself.

“My dad’s an ass,” he said simply, “But we’re getting off topic.” When it was clear that Isaac was about to protest, he added, “I can give you an entire rundown on the many ways in which my dad’s a jerk another time, okay? This is important.”

“Chase, it’s no big deal,” Isaac protested.

Chase made a frustrated sound. He was pretty bad at feelings and he had a lot of them around Isaac. More than usual. It was hard to explain in words to Isaac why this was all so important to Chase.

“Look,” he said eventually, still struggling to find the right words, “It just bugs me that you have to spend so much time doing something you hate, and that you feel like you have to please someone who wants you to spend the rest of your life doing it, when even she should be able to tell that you hate it.”

“I don’t hate-” Isaac protested weakly.

“Isaac, you always look so unhappy talking to customers unless they’re under seven years old. I just... You don’t like working at the bakery, whenever you talk about it you never sound like you enjoy it and your gran is trying to make you do it anyways even when it’s obvious you hate it which is so stupid and you want to make her happy anyways- I just- you deserve better!”

Chase could feel his face slowly but surely turning bright red. Unlike Isaac, Chase knew he didn’t look cute when he blushed, he looked like a crazy person about to snap, according to an ex. And Leo, who was both a jerk and a jackass, but also rarely a liar.

Isaac looked at him with wide eyes, and then grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him solidly on the mouth. Unfortunately, as he was leaning across the middle seat, the angle was awkward and their teeth bumped painfully.

Chase flinched back, smacking his head on the window of the door. Isaac fell sideways into the dashboard, clutching at his mouth and groaning.

Their eyes met and they both cracked up at the same time.

“Man, we both _suck_ at this,” Chase said emphatically, rubbing at the sore spot on his skull.

“Sorry,” Isaac said and started to shift back to his side of the truck.

Chase quickly grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him back. “Oh no you don’t,” Chase said, “Get over here.”

Isaac grinned, lightning quick and they kissed again, properly, without any painful teeth bumps.

When they parted, Isaac leaned back a bit and said, “You’re right. The idea of working the bakery for the rest of my life sounds terrible. But gran’s my family. Even if she drives me crazy, I still want to make her happy, you know?”

Boy, Chase sure did know. He’d just also accepted ages ago that it was something that wasn’t ever going to happen. Mostly. He nodded, and said quietly “You still deserve better”

Isaac smiled at him and leant forward for another kiss.

Their lips had just met when something knocked on the window behind Chase’s head.

Chase startled and smacked his head on the window again. Isaac was more fortunate, but he was also leaning over the middle seat and precariously balanced against Chase, and he nearly fell out of his seat onto the floor, and only prevented this by some creative flailing for a handhold.

A police officer was patiently waiting for Chase to unroll the window.

“Everything alright, boys?” He asked when Chase finally managed to fumble the thing open.

“We’re fine, we were just-uh-” Chase stuttered to a halt at the police officer’s smirk. Aside from the emotional melodrama, it was pretty obvious what they were just doing.

“Perhaps you boys get going,” the police officer suggested with a raised eyebrow, eyes darting to take in Isaac, bright red and still sprawled halfway off the seat. His face was precariously close to crotch level.

“Yes. Right. We’ll do that,” Chase replied uncomfortably.

With a chuckle, the police officer patted the hood of the truck and left.

Neither Chase nor Isaac moved an inch.

“Well that was nice and awkward,” Chase said. He was pretty sure that had been Macnair’s dad too. The rest of the Black Hawks were going to hunt him down for the sole purpose of laughing in his face.

Isaac just dissolved into giggles and climbed back into his seat, pulling his seatbelt on.

“I think I could use that nap now,” he said between giggles.

~

It was only a short drive from there to Isaac’s gran’s place, and they would have gone straight upstairs to sleep except for the truly outrageous rumbling sound Chase’s stomach made when they passed through the kitchen.

Isaac eyed Chase’s stomach and said decisively, “Okay food first.”

Isaac made them grilled cheeses, which were much fancier than Chase had ever made, with expensive local cheese and handmade bread Isaac’s gran had made that morning.

“Isaac,” Chase said, around his second sandwich he had stuffed in his mouth, “I’m sorry but I’m dumping you for your grandmother so she can feed me every day.”

Isaac snorted and said, “I can make bread too, you know.”

“Excellent, never mind I’ll stick with magic bread _and_ cute buns.”

Isaac nearly inhaled part of his sandwich.

Eventually they finally made it upstairs, bellies pleasantly full. Chase was really feeling his incomplete night’s rest, so he sleepily followed Isaac’s example and crawled in after him under the clean, white sheets. It was a bit warm upstairs, but Isaac’s window was open, letting in a fresh breeze that made the gauzy curtains flap lazily. He was pretty exhausted, but he was still certain Isaac’s bed was the most comfortable thing he’d ever laid on. Chase was on the outside edge, with Isaac on the wall side, so he shimmied closer to avoid falling off. This put him directly into a patch of sunlight coming in from a skylight. Chase sighed, feeling absurdly content and pecked Isaac on the cheek before he closed his eyes.

The last thing he noticed was Isaac curling closer, his arm brushing Chase’s and his head nearly touching Chase’s shoulder. Chase was asleep seconds later.

~

There was a crash downstairs and Chase was awake in a heartbeat, jackknifing upright and looking around wildly before he even could remember where he was.

Isaac was lying next to with his eyes open, with his legs curled into Chase’s, but he looked unwilling to move.

“Is that your gran?” Chase whispered, eyes falling on the door to the hall that they’d left slightly ajar.

Isaac nodded. “Yes, but she said she was going to spend the rest of the day at the bakery. She probably just came back to grab something and won’t come upstairs. If we’re quiet, she won’t notice us.”

“What about the truck?” Chase asked, wanting to lay back down and go back to sleep, but also not wanting to deal with a grandmother finding a stranger in her grandson’s bed. A grandson who she thought was still at work.

“You parked it in the back, remember? Gran won’t have seen it.”

“Okay, okay,” Chase said and lay back down, “You win.”

Isaac rested his head on Chase’s shoulder, his cowlicks poking into Chase’s eyes. Rather than move, Chase just closed his eyes and curled an arm over Isaac’s back.

He was nearly asleep again when the door creaked open.

Chase opened his eyes, his gaze meeting Mrs. Ross’s. She stood frozen in the doorway holding a basket of folded laundry.

“Uh, Isaac,” Chase said, jiggling his shoulder a bit to wake him up.

Isaac groaned and turned his face into Chase’s shirt.

“You might want to wake up,” Chase added when Mrs. Ross’s mouth started working soundlessly.

Isaac tipped his head up, opened his eyes, then shot upright, placing one hand on Chase’s torso for balance.

“Shi- shoot. Uh. Gran. Hi.”

Mrs. Ross seemed to finally find her words. “Isaac Franklin Ross,” she said, setting the laundry basket down and stalking into the room.

Isaac made a squeaking sound. Chase really wished he were upright for this conversation, but with Isaac still leaning on him, he couldn’t sit up.

“The marketplace was flooded, so we had to evacuate the stall,” Isaac said, the words coming out of him in a nearly indecipherable rush. “I wrapped up everything that didn’t get wet, so we can sell it at half price tomorrow.”

Mrs. Ross did not look appeased in the slightest. “And you decided to come home to sleep? You know how shorthanded both bakeries are on the weekend.”

Isaac looked away, looking guilty, but didn’t say anything else in his own defence.

Chase couldn’t take this. Isaac had nothing to feel bad about.

He pushed Isaac’s hand off of his chest and sat up. Mrs. Ross looked startled, seeming to have forgotten about Chase’s presence which was kind of hilarious considering how the whole thing started.

“Look, your grandson is hard worker, he hasn’t had a day off in god knows how long and, as far as I can tell, he’s never complained about you making him go work in that hellhole all day every day at the crack of dawn. So you should just give him a break,” Chase said, doing his damnedest to keep a hold of his temper.

“And who are you to tell me how to run my business?” Mrs. Ross demanded sharply as she eyed Chase with obvious distaste.

“Someone who cares about Isaac and who knows him well enough to know when he’s unhappy! Which you would too if you cared about him more than your business or the memory of your son!”

Mrs. Ross’s face went white.

Chase wanted to punch himself. That was too far. He’d gone way too far. It was one thing to think these sorts of things and another to say them to someone’s grandmother, in her own home, while lying in her grandson’s bed.

“I don’t need to listen to this sort of talk in my own household,” Mrs. Ross said once she’d found her voice again. “You will leave immediately. And we will be having a talk about the sort of people you’re associating with, young man,” she added to Isaac, who was frozen in horror. With that, she swept out of the room.

Chase groaned and pressed his face into his hands. “Oh my god I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I mean, I meant what I said but…”

“It’s okay,” Isaac said, not sounding like he thought it was even in the vicinity of okay. “This is something that’s been brewing for a while. It’s not your fault. But you should probably go before she comes back to yell at me.”

Chase let his hands fall away from his face.

“I am so sorry. I just… really care about you, okay?”

Isaac smiled and touched his wrist. “It’s okay, I’m glad. I’m not angry with you. I’ll see you tomorrow okay?”

Chase nodded and yanked him in for a bone cracking hug. Isaac clutched at his shoulders, equally hard, then pushed him away gently.

“Text me when she’s done raking you through the coals,” Chase said and crawled out of Isaac’s bed.

“I will,” Isaac promised, following suit. “Now go.”

Chase slipped shamefully out the back door and drove off to drop off Tarragon’s truck, feeling like the world’s biggest jerk anyways. He was probably the worst boyfriend ever. Well, Chase couldn’t say he was surprised in his own inability to be a functional human being, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t wholeheartedly disgusted with himself for dragging Isaac down with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flower Meanings:  
> Honeysuckle: affection  
> Lilac (purple): first emotion of love  
> Gardenia: joy, sweet love  
> Jonquil: return my affection


	3. Chapter 3

“We should start a club,” Chase announced, around pink drink number two.

“What kind of club?” Tony asked from his seat across from Chase. He was not dancing on any tables or even making dubiously alcoholic beverages that night since the bar was ostensibly closed. Black’s was never really closed, but on days that the sign said it was closed, only Tony’s friends and the least cult-like Black Hawks were allowed in. Drinks weren’t free despite the bar being not technically open for business, but luckily all of Chase’s pink drinks were on the house since he’d brought food from the fish and chip place down the road to prevent anyone from becoming desperate enough to eat Tony’s cooking.

“Bastard Father’s Anonymous,” Chase replied, with a sour sort of smile. Since he’d been in a guilty awful mood over all that had happened with Isaac and his gran, his father had predictably immediately started arguing with Chase the second he’d arrived home. Because that was just how Chase’s life went now, apparently. He’d been forced to turn on his heel and leave before he did anything he’d regret later.

“Cheers to that, I’ll join,” Tony said, raising his glass towards Chase, and smiled a rather bitter smile.

The Black brothers were an odd pair. Tony had long since been all but disowned by the Black family shortly after he’d announced he was opening a bar rather than going to university to _take_ the bar, whereas Leo was still ostensibly on good terms with his parents.

Leo had once said, while completely sloshed, that it was only because his parents didn’t have a third kid to fall back on to inherit the family law practice, making it necessary for them to look the other way when Leo did things they didn’t like. Like hang out with his black sheep of an older brother, or with Chase, the town’s elite’s greatest disappointment.

There was a good reason Chase and Leo were good friends, and it wasn’t just because they both had an unfortunate tendency towards minor delinquency and poorly thought through plans.

“Me too,” Leo said with a weary sigh. He was wearing a suit that evening, which meant that he’d spent the day in the Black & Associates law office, something that was more than enough to compel anyone to murder. “What about you, Rowan?” He added when Rowan appeared at the table with a tray full of water glasses, since he was the only one out of the lot of them with a shred of sense.

“Unfortunately, I have a perfectly ordinary and non-bastard dad,” Rowan said with a small smile. “My grandpa’s a real homophobic old fart, though. Can I be an honorary member with that?”

“I suppose so. You could be our secretary or something,” Tony drawled, and then tugged Rowan onto his lap, ignoring the swat that both that and his words both earned him. Rowan rolled his eyes, but let Tony hold him close. “What about that Isaac guy you’ve been talking about nonstop? He got a jerk dad too?”

“Isaac?” Leo asked and turned to stare at Chase, a predatory look in his eye. Somehow, Chase had, partly intentionally, failed to mention the whole Isaac situation to Leo, outside of him knowing that Isaac existed. At first it had mostly been by accident, since Leo had been gone more often than not so far that summer. But Isaac wasn’t the usual kind of person that Chase hung around with and Leo was a lot for someone who was… Well for someone who wasn’t an emotionally constipated bastard like the rest of the Black Hawks. So, some of that not mentioning Isaac to Leo might have been a bit intentional. Just a smidge.

“He’s Chase’s boyfriend,” Tony said with a mischievous smirk. Chase hated his face. If his drinks weren’t already free, Chase would never tip him again.

“Chase’s _boyfriend_ , huh?” Leo grinned at Chase widely, his expression promising merry hell and endless teasing.

“We aren’t dating,” Chase grumbled, because while he’d sort of begun thinking of himself as Isaac’s boyfriend, they still hadn’t had a real chance to talk about it, and assuming things was a stupid thing to do, but… “Besides, he can’t join out club, it sounds like his dad was a saint. His grandma’s a real piece of work though.”

Even as he said it, Chase felt a little more guilty than before. Because while he didn’t regret what he’d said- what was the point of regretting something if you meant every word of it?- he did regret how it happened. And he couldn’t _blame_ Mrs. Ross for reacting how she did. Chase was hardly a catch or the sort of boy you wanted hanging around your grandson. Or in his bed. She obviously cared deeply for Isaac. That didn’t mean she wasn’t wrong for treating him the way she did.

Rowan raised his eyebrows at Chase, clearly calling bullshit on the not dating part, but because he was the nicest person on the planet, he didn’t push the issue. “Another honorary member, then,” he said instead.

“Cheers to the first meeting of Bastard Father’s Anonymous,” Chase said and raised his glass again. “May we always be the greatest disappointments they’ve ever had.”

~

The next morning, Chase was fidgety and anxious the whole ride from his house to Tarragon’s and then from Tarragon’s to the marketplace. That he’d had three cups of coffee already that morning probably didn’t help. Isaac hadn’t texted him.

Chase had stayed out late at Black’s, though he hadn’t gotten more than tipsy since he’d known he’d only grow maudlin and melodramatic given the mood he’d already been in. He’d stayed there until he’d been sure his father would be in bed, then he’d snuck into the house. He’d been too worried about Isaac to want to even begin to deal with his father after their last argument.

Unfortunately, being so worried meant any sleep he did get, even in his own bed instead of the terrible booth seats at Black’s, was hardly restful and he had popped awake at 4 AM, unable to sleep.

He would have just gone early to the marketplace, since Isaac usually got there before 6 to set up, but Tarragon had texted the night before to say she’d forgotten to load some plants into the truck and would do it in the morning, so he had needed to wait later than usual to drive to the market.

When he finally arrived, nerves left behind somewhere near Tarragon’s greenhouse, he didn’t even bother unloading the plants before he went to see Isaac. The tourists could wait five minutes for him before they started bugging him about their morning glories or oregano, this was more important.

“Hey,” Isaac said, eyebrows raising when he caught sight of Chase, probably due to him looking slightly crazed. “Are you alright?” His voice was filled with concern and made Chase feel all melty inside, like a pizza pocket fresh from the microwave, and if that was the sort of nonsense his brain was coming up with Chase was either seriously sleep deprived or ridiculously head over heels for this kid. Chase had a feeling it might be a little of column a and a little of column b.

Isaac reached over the counter to gently touch the bags under Chase’s right eye. “Did you even get any sleep?”

“Some,” Chase replied. “Are _you_ okay?”

Isaac shrugged and smiled, a bit wanly. “It could have gone worse. Somehow. Maybe if I had set the house on fire or had told her I was pregnant or something.”

“I would have totally made an honest woman of you if that had happened,” Chase replied immediately.

“Thanks, I’m relieved to hear that. Now I have another way this could have been worse: a shotgun wedding.”

“We could have been actually having sex instead of sleeping,” Chase suggested, because sometimes words just fell out of his mouth without him actually stopping to _think_ about what was coming out of his brain.

Both of them turned bright red.

“That would have been worse,” Isaac agreed, voice a little strangled. “Sorry for not texting, my phone died and either I lost my charger or gran is hiding it from me out of sheer spite. After she lectured me on every life choice I’ve ever made leading up to that moment, she decided to go with the silent treatment.”

Chase sighed, feeling somewhat relieved. Having so long to dwell on it had left him with plenty of time to come up with increasingly absurd scenarios, culminating in one where Isaac was disowned and had to rely upon Chase to support him while he died of consumption. It had also involved Chase getting drafted for the Civil War. That one had taken place while Chase was failing at falling asleep again in the early hours of the morning. At the time, it had seemed perfectly reasonable. And Isaac had looked cute with sideburns and a pipe, even while dying a slow, tragic death.

“I really am sorry,” Chase repeated a bit uselessly.

Isaac smiled at him. “Stop saying that, I know. It’s okay. Now go set up the plants before Tarragon’s spider sense goes off about you slacking and she has to drive all the way down here to yell at you.”

Chase felt a bit better about the whole thing, but resolved to give Isaac flowers later that day anyways. He didn’t think Isaac was secretly still mad at him, but it would make Chase feel a bit less like the worst person ever.

~

“Well one good thing came out of this,” Isaac said later that day, nearing the inevitable dead zone around lunch time.

“What’s that?” Chase asked from his usual lounging spot when the marketplace was dead quiet; leaning against the plywood side of the bakery booth.

“Since gran isn’t talking to me even by text, she hasn’t told me to go pick a shift up at either of the bakeries. So, after I’m done here, I’m free for once.”

Chase craned his head back to beam at Isaac. “That’s great! You can finally catch on some rest.” It hadn’t escaped his notice that Isaac had looked more tired than usual that day, as if he, like Chase, hadn’t slept well. So much for catching up on sleep with that nap the day previous.

“Well,” Isaac said, sounding a bit hesitant. It was impossible to tell from the angle he was at, but Chase could imagine how he was biting his lip. Adorable. “I was actually thinking we could do something together.”

Chase sat up properly and shifted around so he could look up at Isaac perched on his stool behind the counter.

“Why Isaac Ross, are you asking me on a date?” Chase demanded, entirely delighted.

Isaac laughed. “I guess so. I’ve never asked anyone out before. Or been asked out. But we were on one yesterday, so it’s not that big of a deal.”

“Yes, it is,” Chase argued, “It’s a very big deal. And yesterday doesn’t count that was just… two people doing things together.”

“Chase, I’m pretty sure that’s what a date is.”

“Nobody asked anyone if they wanted to go on a date, there was no yawn-stretch-over-the-shoulder move or awkward dinner conversation,” Chase argued and then smiled when an elderly lady passing by gave him a deeply concerned look.

“We might have skipped a few steps,” Isaac observed, “But me nearly headbutting you in the mouth was plenty awkward, as was my gran finding you in my bed, so I think we’ve got this covered.”

Chase frowned and shook his head firmly. “No way, if you’re going on your first date it should be perfect- wait hold on I have an idea!”

Chase leapt to his feet and went and rummaged around in the discarded flower bin, quickly finding what he wanted. He had to sell a few cucumber plants to a middle-aged woman first, and then took the flowers over to Isaac.

He’d picked white Jasmine, purple lilacs and white hyacinths and had even dug up some of the nice paper to wrap them in (paid for with Leo’s money so Tarragon wouldn’t get mad and actually fire him from his willing unpaid indentured servitude).

“Tada!” He said and handed them over with a flourish.

Isaac accepted them with his usual smile and set them somewhere behind the counter since the bouquet was too big for his normal jam jars, or even the small vase that had made its way into the bakery booth at some point.

“Step one complete,” Chase said triumphantly.

“Step one of what?” Isaac asked.

“Of your first date ever! It will be magical, and will involve dinner, scintillating conversation, excellent company, and fireworks. Well, I can only promise the first one. I’ll pick you up at seven?”

“We could just drop of Tarragon’s stuff and the bakery stuff and then get dinner,” Isaac pointed out.

Chase shook his head emphatically. “No way, getting picked up is a very important step in a first date. Though I’m going to skip the part where I have a conversation with your grandmother about getting you home by midnight.”

“You do realize this isn’t the 1950s and we’re both actual adults, right?” Isaac asked wryly.

“I also would like to shower all this plant crap off of me and maybe change into something less sweaty if I’m going to dinner,” Chase added.

“I see your point,” Isaac replied and then noticed a customer hovering awkwardly a few feet away and he shooed Chase away so he could deal with that.

~

Tarragon came by in the midafternoon to take over from Chase and sent him home. Normally he would have been a bit disappointed about missing out on prime Isaac Time, even if it was Sunday which was inexplicably always a madhouse near the end of the day, but they would see each other soon, so he didn’t mind too much.

He was covered in potting soil as usual, so he had to go home for a shower and dig up a change of clothing. Theoretically, if he could find it, he’d wear something nice since he was planning on it being an honest-to-god Date Night. It was Isaac’s first honest to god date and Chase was going to get it right if it killed him.

Chase, unsurprising given his taste in friends, hadn’t actually been on many actual dates. Mostly he’d made out with people while inebriated on various legal and illegal substances at some Black Hawk’s party, and then had spent a fair amount of time in the general vicinity of that person for a few weeks until they inevitably dumped him, usually with neither party being terribly upset about the turn of events.

But this was Isaac’s first proper date, so Chase clearly had to pull out all the stops, like wearing clothing that didn’t have holes in them and taking him somewhere nice that wasn’t full of stoners or, worse, to Black’s. Taking Isaac there would result in half the Black Hawks crawling out of the woodwork they’d been hiding in ever since the greenhouse incident, just to harass Chase and probably mortify Isaac with increasingly personal questions. Also, there was the issue of food poisoning and the fact that the tables were always kind of disgustingly sticky.

But going somewhere that wasn’t Black’s would require money. Money that Chase was, as usual, rather short on.

So, he texted Leo.

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

Let me steal your wallet and give it back to you later without either of us mentioning it ever taking place.

**To: Chase**

no im busy

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

That’s nice, I don’t care. Get your ass over to Black’s asap

**To: Chase**

im totally about to score with this hot chick, leave me alone

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

It’s the middle of the afternoon, no woman could possibly be drunk enough to make the mistake of talking to you, you lying liar who lies

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

Come on answer your texts this is a dire emergency

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

Leooooooooo

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

LEO LEO LEO

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

LEONARD

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

LEOPOLD THE LION

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

Come on, I know at least one of those pisses you off

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

I’m going to keep blowing up your phone if you don’t answer me

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

I can do this all day

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

YOU KNOW I CAN

**To: Chase**

OMFG STOP IT

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

I have a date jackass

**To: Chase**

????? my little boy is all grown up. remember, if you’re feeling spunky, wrap your monkey

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

I will set fire to everything you hold dear

**To: Chase**

so this chick just said that anya told her that randy said that macnair said that his dad found you having sex with some chick in a convertible in the middle of downtown yesterday

**To: Chase**

and here i thought i had all the fun in this bromance

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

Okay, a) that’s none of your business you giant gossiphound b) I’m gay remember, it was a guy c) where in the hell would I find a convertible to have sex in d) if I was going to have sex with someone in a convertible why would I pick the middle of town full of people to scandalize and call the cops before I got anywhere near anything resembling a base e) no we weren’t even kissing, we were having a deeply personal conversation when Macnair’s dad scared the shit out of me and I nearly concussed myself on the door

**To: Chase**

it is a sad statement on your love life when i believe you about the deep conversation thing without it being a euphemism

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

Also we don’t have a bromance. If we did you’d GIVE ME MONEY SO I ACTUALLY HAVE THAT SEX. Though it wouldn’t be in a convertible, that sounds really uncomfortable.

**To: Chase**

wait so you want my money so you can go to a hotel and not have sex with your dad hanging around? Or is it for a hooker? JK I know you’re way too law abiding for that, don’t get your panties in a twist

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

I was joking I just want to take him to dinner somewhere that won’t give him food poisoning.

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

Besides, I’ve already been in his bed.

**To: Chase**

OHOHOHOHOH SOMEONE GOT SOME GAME WHEN I WASN’T LOOKING

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

I WAS JOKING CHRIST. I took a nap in his bed. I was tired, that’s what happens when you actually have a job, jackass.

**To: Chase**

sure you were. i need to meet this boy now

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

If you ever mention this conversation to him I’ll tell Anya it was you who threw up in her hat at that party, not whoever you blamed it on

**To: Chase**

oooo pulling out the big guns, this kid must be important.

**To Chase:**

Cool so you blowing up my phone made this chick ditch me, thanks for that. black’s in ten?

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

No way, she must have just come to her senses and fled. I have to shower and find a decent shirt, make it twenty.

**To: Chase**

fifteen and I’ll loan you that blue shirt I got for christmas

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

Changed my mind, best bromance ever, see you in 15

~

Chase showed up at Isaac’s gran’s place on his mother’s pink bike, wearing Leo’s fancy collared shirt and with a bite mark fading on one hand, and the knuckles on the other slowly darkening from pink to purple.

It had been quite an eventful night at the Hart household.

“Ready to go?” He asked Isaac who was waiting for him at the bottom of the dirt driveway.

“Yes- oh my god what happened to your hand?” Isaac asked, spotting his knuckles. Chase discreetly held his other hand out of sight. Bite marks would be harder to explain.

“Nothing too terrible, my dad was just being a jerk as usual,” Chase said, trying to downplay the drama to keep Isaac from getting too concerned.

“You got in a fight with your dad?” Isaac said, only growing even more concerned.

“What? No, I mean we exchanged words, but no one punched anyone,” Chase replied, which was entirely true. Chase had simply been dumb enough to take his frustration out by punching the nearest wall. Not the brightest idea he’d ever had.

Isaac didn’t look appeased in the slightest.

“What were you fighting about?” He asked.

“Oh, nothing new, just the usual school stuff and the ‘son you are a colossal disappointment’ stuff with a side of ‘what were you doing out until four am, it was probably something illegal’. My dad just likes to argue, it happens, so don’t worry about it, okay?”

“What were you doing out until four am?” Isaac asked, thankfully dropping the more uncomfortable direction of the conversation.

“Oh, I was with Leo for a bit, nothing dangerous or illegal,” Chase replied, then shot a glance towards Isaac’s house. “We should probably get going before your gran calls the cops on me or, worse, comes out to glare at me some more.”

Isaac frowned but then shot the house a worried look. “You’re right let’s get going.”

~

Chase had known he would need to introduce Leo and Isaac sooner rather than later, now that Tony had mentioned him and Chase had borrowed one of Leo’s fancy, expensive collared shirts for what was explicitly a date.

He had been waiting for a situation where he could quickly make excuses and leave quickly with Isaac the moment Leo started being more of an ass than usual, just to prevent too much collateral damage.

Because it involved Leo, that wasn’t how things happened.

Leo showed up at the marketplace unannounced and unexpected in the middle of the day while Chase was wearing a literal flower crown along with his usual pink apron and had potting soil in his hair and probably on his face. He was also flirting with a technically of-age Gino Viala because the prick had been bugging Isaac again when Chase wasn’t around.

Frankly, Chase couldn’t think of a worse or more embarrassing way for his oldest friend to meet his maybe-boyfriend and he wasn’t sure if it was because he lacked the necessary imagination to think of something worse or if it was simply because he already was in the literal worst possible scenario.

Chase hadn’t yet moved beyond the standard first step of getting Viala to run off, which was to leer uncomfortably at him while leaning on one elbow on the counter of Isaac’s booth, hovering just on the edge of a normal person’s personal bubble. He was trying to decide which awful pickup line he felt like using, caught between ‘I seem to have lost my phone number, can I have yours?’ and ‘are you French because maDAMN’, when he heard a familiar choked laugh.

Chase looked over Viala’s pointy little shoulder and saw Leo standing a few feet away, shoulders shaking and his eyebrows raised so high in disbelief that they nearly disappeared into his bangs.

‘Really? What the hell, Chase??’ Leo’s expression seemed to say.

Chase shrugged and tilted his head slightly towards Viala between them, trying to indicate ‘this guy is being a prick so I’m screwing with him’.

Leo traded disbelief for maniac glee in a split second and stepped into Viala’s space, planting a hand on the counter, mirroring Chase’s pose.

“Is your dad a baker, cause you got a nice set of buns,” Leo said, making Viala nearly jump out of his skin.

Isaac, who’d been silently watching the whole scene with a sort of embarrassed resignation, appeared to choke on his own tongue and slapped one hand over his mouth.

Goddamn it, how had Chase not thought of that one?

“If you were a flower you’d be a DAMNdelion,” Chase said quickly. Viala looked back and forth between Leo, lost for words.

Leo pouted at him over Viala’s shoulder and said, almost making it sound like a legitimate question, “Are you from Tennessee? Because you’re the only ten I see.”

Chase shook his head in mock-disapproval. “That was low and overused, even for you,” he informed Leo tartly, only slightly annoyed he hadn’t gotten to that one first.

“What is _wrong_ with you people?” Viala snapped, his voice comically high, colour high on his cheeks. He stepped away from the pair of them and stomped off, muttering under his breath about ‘gay freaks’.

Chase beamed widely, because that was all he aspired in life to be, and he gave up attempting not to laugh at that point and all but fell over cackling. The woman in the booth next to the bakery didn’t even look over, long used to Chase’s shenanigans after multiple months of being exposed to him.

“That really wasn’t necessary, Chase,” Isaac said, attempting to sound chastising, but mostly sounding fond.

“You’re right, it wasn’t just necessary, it was _extremely_ necessary.”

“It was a thing of beauty,” Leo agreed cheerfully, then frowned minutely. “Who was that that I just scared off and please tell me he wasn’t underage, because that would make this kinda gross instead of entertaining.”

“That was Gino Viala resident asshole, daddy’s boy, owner of an unfortunate haircut, and an all-around dick. Also, over eighteen.” Chase answered and pushed a drooping daisy out of his eyes.

“He isn’t that bad,” Isaac protested, though it was obvious his heart wasn’t really in it.

“He really, really is,” Chase argued. He was of the opinion that anyone who didn’t see what a cinnamon roll Isaac was, was at least a little terrible, especially if they had the time and money to waste harassing someone they had gone to school with while they were at work.

“What’s with the flowers?” Leo asked, gesturing to the rather elaborate crown Chase was still sporting. He’d finally gotten the hang of making them the day before, but Isaac had refused to wear the one Chase was wearing, so Chase had put it on and pouted until Isaac agreed to wear one once he finished work and didn’t need to worry about baked goods and pollen mixing.

“I’m at work, asshole,” Chase said fondly, and gestured at his pink apron. “Can’t you tell?”

Leo looked surprised. “Right I forgot about that whole community service thing.”

“It’s your fault I’m stuck doing it,” Chase grumbled back, though it was more of a group problem, but mentioning that wasn’t how his and Leo’s friendship worked.

“Why didn’t your other friends also get community service hours?” Isaac asked. He was eyeing Leo warily, which was probably the most sensible way to react to Leo.

“My dearest friends all took off running the second we heard the sirens, and I had the misfortune of tripping over a garden gnome and getting tangled in a rosebush, so I couldn’t escape before the cops got there,” he explained and shrugged.

Isaac frowned. “And none of them came forward after they heard you’d gotten caught?”

“Hey it’s no big deal, Isaac,” Chase said, then twitched slightly when he saw Leo perk up at Isaac’s name- because he hadn’t known who Isaac was, until Chase had used his name, like an idiot.

“So, this is Isaac?” Leo asked looking a bit too excited for it to mean well for anyone involved.

“Stop,” Chase said by way of reply.

“Nice to meet you?” Isaac said. It sounded more like a question rather than a statement. Leo grinned wider, a frankly terrifying to look even to someone as used to it as Chase.

“You must bring him to the party tonight,” Leo told Chase.

“What party?” Isaac asked at the same time as Chase, realizing it would have to have something to do with Anya’s upcoming wedding, turned white and said loudly, “No!”

“You’re no fun, Chad,” Leo said, rolling his eyes. “We haven’t had a party with the whole gang in ages, you should bring _Isaac_ to meet everyone.”

“The last time ‘the whole gang’ had a party, a greenhouse got blown up,” Chase replied, “Which is the entire reason we haven’t had a party since then. And don’t call me Chad, I feel like I’m going to spontaneously sprout a snapback, membership to a frat house, and a misogynistic attitude.”

“The Black Hawks would be the worst frat ever,” Leo had to agree. “Okay I’ll never call you Chad again if you bring your new boy toy-”

“ _Leo-_ ”

“Your new boy _friend_ to the party tonight. It’s just going to be at Black’s, nothing too exciting, Tony will even be there. He’s mentioned being worried about you a few times,” Leo added, a small look of confusion passing over his face.

Chase was unpleasantly reminded of the number of times he’d ended up drinking alone at Black’s and then weepily whining at Tony and/or Rowan, who was both significantly more sympathetic than Leo, but also was not a childhood friend or the brother of one. It was kind of a lot of times and was extremely embarrassing. He had zero desire to go talk to Tony while not under the influence of anything.

On the other hand, if it was at Black’s, that meant they wouldn’t be breaking into somewhere illegally and having a party. He couldn’t hope for a tamer location to introduce Isaac to his delinquent friends.

“Your gran isn’t making you work tonight, is she?” He asked Isaac, kind of hoping the answer would be yes.

Isaac shook his head.

Chase sighed, long and loudly. “Fine. We’ll see you at nine, jerkface.”

“Excellent,” Leo said grinning a terrifying grin. “That’s when karaoke starts. You’ll get to see Chase sing Celine Dion if you get a few cocktails into him first,” He added to Isaac.

Chase had the worst taste in friends. “You will _not_ ,” he said to Leo, shoving him away with a hand on his face. “Now go away, we have a strict no loitering policy here.”

“We really, really don’t,” the lady from the booth next to Isaac’s said, having abandoned her book in favour of watching them instead.

Leo just laughed and took off.

Chase looked at Isaac.

“So, want to meet all of my friends tonight?” He asked. “I promise at least one of them won’t be worse than Leo.” Chase could only make that promise because he knew Rowan would show up to make sure the Black Hawks didn’t entirely destroy the bar, which probably spoke volumes about a) Chase’s ongoing poor life choices b) Chase’s poor choice in childhood friends an c) the ongoing list of reasons Rowan was a saint.

“I suppose it can’t be worse than you meeting my gran,” Isaac mused.

Chase wasn’t so sure about that, but kept his thoughts to himself. No use scaring Isaac. Or tempting fate further.

“Tarragon’s coming in a half hour, but I’ll come back when you’re done and we can have dinner before going to Black’s, if that works for you?”

“Why don’t we just eat there?”

“You really, really don’t want to do that, trust me.”

~

Chase came back to the marketplace much less sweaty and covered in potting soil than when he had left. It was much cooler in the evening, with the sun having sunk down behind the peaks of the mountains, casting long shadows in the market.

Most of the booths were empty, Tarragon’s included, and Isaac was just selling the last of his cookies to an elderly man when Chase got there, so he hovered far enough away not to be a distraction.

“I’m pretty much ready to go,” Isaac told him. “One of my coworkers offered to drive the leftovers to the main store for me, so I just need to tally up the cashbox first.”

“No rush,” Chase said, and perched himself on the edge of the counter that normally held several large, glass cookie jars.

Isaac quickly finished packing up the last of the baked goods and then moved onto methodically counting the money in the cashbox and writing it down on a slip of paper. When he was done he handed it all off to a redheaded man who nodded to Chase, then climbed into the car full of the remaining goods and drove off.

“Where do you want to eat?” Chase asked when Isaac emerged from around the side of the booth.

Isaac shrugged. “I’m not that hungry yet, want to walk by the lake for a bit first?”

“Sure. Oh right- before I forget, I drew this for you while I was killing time at home,” Chase said and handed over the little doodle he’d done that afternoon.

It was a picture of a cartoon Isaac as a wizard making a few cookies float. There was a dragon that looked suspiciously like Gino Viala sulking in the background.

Isaac laughed. “That’s so cute!” He carefully tucked the piece of paper away in his pocket. He visibly hesitated before asking, “You said before that you went to art school for a while, right?”

Chase felt his smile slip a bit, but gamely said, “Yeah. I did.”

He felt his phone vibrate and quickly pulled it out. Not many people texted him, so he figured it might be important.

**To: Chase**

Emergency. Come to Black’s. Party cancelled. Don’t bring boyfriend.

Chase frowned and then said to Isaac, “Sorry, I need to reply to this.”

**To: Leo (the giant arse)**

???? Are you okay? What’s wrong?

**To: Chase**

Tony has gone and done something stupid, eloped with Rowan. Parents have officially disowned him, they’re also now mad at me.

“Shit,” Chase hissed down at his phone. To Isaac his said, “Sorry, I have to go. The party’s cancelled.”

Isaac’s frown deepened. “Look if you don’t want to talk to me about your dad you don’t have to make something up to leave.”

“What?”

“You keep brushing me off whenever I try to ask you about your dad, and it’s pretty obvious something is wrong there- your hand was all bruised last week. I’m just worried about you, okay?” Isaac was staring at him, forehead creased, and his eyes filled with disappointment that cut through Chase like a hot knife through butter.

“Look, it’s no big deal-” Chase started to say, but Isaac cut him off sharply.

“You made a big deal about my gran wanting me to work at the bakery. Am I not allowed to care that you seem to always be arguing with your father?” Isaac demanded. He had his hands on his hips, which was kind of unintentionally funny, and he also had a point, but this was really just not the time-

“Are you mad about what happened with your gran or something? Because I already said I was sorry about that!” Chase snapped without actually meaning to say that. Rather than seem hurt, Isaac only seemed to get angrier.

“Well maybe I am! She still hasn’t talked to me since that day and it’s all your fault! You’re allowed to mess my life up, but I’m not allowed to say that you deserve better from your dad and deserve better friends who don’t ditch you after getting you into trouble?” Isaac snapped at him. They were starting to gather a crowd and people were skirting awkwardly around them, since they were also kind of blocking the sidewalk. Chase could not find it in him to give even half a shit.

“Hey don’t talk about my friends like that,” Chase growled back, because Leo was a jerk, and Anya and Randy were even worse usually, but they’d always been there when it had actually mattered. Ultimately Chase didn’t give a shit that they’d let him take the fall for the greenhouse, it sucked, but he knew that if there had been actual serious consequences they’d have been there in a heartbeat. They were assholes, but they were _his_ assholes, and they cared about him in their own way.

Before Isaac could respond, Chase’s phone vibrated with another text.

“Fine, go see your friend. See if I care,” Isaac said coldly and then stomped off.

“Maybe I will!” Chase shouted at his retreating back, feeling exceptionally angry, but mostly just like an idiot.

The people who’d been unsubtly watching the whole thing started whispering to each other, even less subtly, so Chase whirled on them and snapped, “Shows over!” and stormed off, not feeling even a remotely better for his outburst. He was such an idiot.

~

The next day, Chase was understandably in a bad mood when he arrived at Tarragon’s to pick up the day’s plants. He’d spent the majority of the night with Leo, and had heard several times about how Leo’s brother was the most brainless idiot alive and why couldn’t he wait until their parents kicked the bucket to marry his boyfriend, along with about how his parents were the worst homophobic old money assholes to walk the earth.

Chase’s mood was not helped by the news that greeted him when he got to Tarragon’s.

“I’m sorry,” Tarragon said to him, “But he’s my husband’s favourite nephew, and he needs something to put on his resume that isn’t babysitting.”

Chase sighed, feeling irritable but without anywhere to direct it. “No, it’s fine, I should have checked my phone last night.”

“Let me know if you’re looking for a job next summer, alright?” Tarragon said, looking apologetic.

Chase thanked her and exchanged a few more pleasantries with her before biking home.

He hadn’t wanted to see Isaac anyways, and it wasn’t like he’d worked at Tarragon’s out of a passion for gardening. Less than 24 hours and he’d lost a both a boyfriend and his not-job. Great one, Chase. Just really well done.

He crawled back into bed the moment he got home. This was fine.

~

It was three in the morning and Chase was about to make an ill-advised phone call while inebriated. But he wasn’t calling Isaac. Because even drunk him wasn’t that stupid.

“Chase?”

“Hey Rowan.”

There was a short pause. Chase could faintly hear the sound of crashing waves in the background. Of course Tony had eloped them somewhere tropical. “Chase, is everything okay?” Rowan asked, when Chase didn’t say anything else.

“No,” Chase said, and found that he was holding back laughter for some inexplicable reason. Drunk Chase was a strange fellow. Or maybe it was just the crippling emotional downward spiral following being dumped by the best thing he’d ever had in his life. Or the knowledge that it was entirely his own fault, and was something he’d known he’d end up screwing up since the beginning, from the moment he’d seen Isaac making faces at him across the street, a knowledge that weighed heavy on him, like Atlas with the weight of the heavens on his back.

Then Chase had to laugh again because there was melodramatic and then there was _that_.

“Okay,” Rowan said, his voice very carefully moderated and calm. “Are you in any danger? How much have you had to drink?”

Chase eyed his collection of empty beer cans. There were enough to make a small structure. None of them had tasted as good as the weird pink drinks at Black’s, but taste really hadn’t been the point.

“I’m not in danger of alcohol poisoning,” he said, because the point hadn’t been to hurt himself either.

“Well, that’s reassuring,” Rowan said, a hint of sarcasm creeping into his calm. “And also doesn’t really answer my question.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Chase grumbled. He was an adult, who could make adult decisions. And have adult arguments like a total twat. He was still working on the apologizing like an adult part, since he was an adult who didn’t even know where to begin now that he’d paddled himself so far up shit creek. Chase wasn’t really sure where that metaphor was going- another reason he really shouldn’t be allowed to drink. The point was that he sucked.

“Why did you call me, Chase?” Rowan asked. He didn’t sound angry or annoyed, but he did sound tired. Chase realized guiltily that he had no clue what time it was wherever Tony had whisked them off to. It probably wasn’t a reasonable hour no matter where he was.

“You’re the only sensible person I know,” Chase said honestly. “And I need someone to tell me I’m being an idiot.”

“I’m sure Leo or Tony could do that for you,” Rowan pointed out.

He had a point, but… “Yeah, but _they_ are also idiots. Doesn’t count when an idiot calls you an idiot. You’re not an idiot, so it counts.”

Rowan paused thoughtfully and Chase stretched out further in the booth and propped his feet up on the table because no one was there to tell him not to ruin the already disgusting tables. Black’s was temporarily closed with Tony being out of town, but Chase had the spare key, and it had been the only place he could think to go.

“That Isaac sounded like he wasn’t an idiot either,” Rowan said eventually, something in his voice indicating that he had an inkling as to what was really going on. Chase vaguely wondered if Tony’s boyfriend/husband was a mind reader along with being a saint.

“Isaac won’t talk to me long enough to call me an idiot,” Chase snorted. It wasn’t entirely true given that he hadn’t even tried. But there had been radio silence even after Chase had stopped showing up at the market, and Chase was pretty sure that had to mean something.

“What happened, Chase?” Rowan asked gently.

“You know how you said that we don’t get to pick who you care about, even when they do dumb things?” Chase asked, because approaching his feelings head on was pretty much impossible even when he was blitzed on cheap beer.

“I remember. Did Isaac do something dumb?”

“No,” Chase said, starting to laugh. Or maybe he was starting to cry. He couldn’t tell. His throat hurt and his face was wet. “God, no. I’m the stupid one. I’m always the stupid one who messes up. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about that choosing who you care about, because I’m sure he doesn’t care about me anymore. Or at least I hope he doesn’t, no one should have to deal with caring about me after all I’ve done.” He laughed, because melodramatic much? This was why he shouldn’t be allowed to drink alone. It didn’t mean it wasn’t true, but seriously Chase might as well have been writing sad poems in his journal along with drinking alone in the dark. He was such a loser.

“You’re too hard on yourself, Chase,” Rowan said. In the background, Chase thought he heard Tony’s voice, followed by Rowan whispering something back.

“I should go, sorry for calling you at whatever time it is there,” Chase said, feeling even more guilty and awful than before he’d called. There he went, ruining things even while hundreds of miles away.

“Don’t you dare hang up,” Rowan said, his voice surprisingly stern. It sounded like he’d moved into another room, Tony and the ocean gone from the background. “This is something you need to hear, so pay attention. Ever since I met you- that was when you were in still middle school, mind- you’ve always measured yourself by whatever ridiculous standards your father set and then decided that since you didn’t meet them, that meant you were worthless. You have other qualities, Chase. One of your best, in my opinion, is how much you care about your friends.

“Now, I don’t know what you’ve done with Isaac. But I’m willing to bet that it had to do with you caring about him and not expressing it properly, or something like that. Caring about people isn’t a bad thing, and if Isaac is as smart as you think he is, I’m sure he knows why you did what you did.”

“I didn’t realize you and Tony had been dating for that long.”

“ _Chase_.”

“Okay, fine. I guess I see your point. I just don’t see how Isaac can even care about me after all this.”

“Love isn’t about just liking the best qualities of someone, Chase. You have to take the bad with the good, because otherwise you’re going to be terribly disappointed when that person makes a mistake. We’re only human, we can’t ask for more than that.”

“Who said anything about love?” Chase grumbled irritably, and scrubbed at his face.

“Oops. My mistake. Of course you weren’t talking about love at all. My point still stands. Unless you’ve killed his gran or something, I’m sure Isaac still cares about you, even if he’s not happy with you right now.”

“But what do I _do_ now?” Chase asked, finally getting to what he’d called Rowan for in the first place.

“Well, since I don’t know all that’s happened, all I can suggest is this: apologies,” Rowan said, chuckling a little.

“ _Ugh_. I knew you were going to say that. Why did I even call you?”

Rowan snorted. “Because Leo would have told you to try and buy his affections back, and Tony would have suggested something involving public nudity. I don’t even want to consider what Anya would say.”

“What about Randy?” Chase asked, starting to smile despite himself.

“Oh, I think the greenhouse incident has already well established that he’d just tell you to do whatever Isaac wanted.”

“Not necessarily bad advice,” Chase had to point out, ignoring how agreeing with anything Randy said, no matter how hypothetical, made him feel like he was breaking out in hives.

“Relationships are two-way streets, Chase. Or at least healthy ones are.”

“That why you and Tony eloped?”

Rowan chuckled. “Something like that. And we needed a break from you losers. Besides, who could resist the opportunity to _really_ piss off Mr. and Mrs. Black?”

Chase considered this, mentally agreed that that was as solid reasoning as anything, and then asked, “Why is someone nice like you even _friends_ with any of us?”

“Someone has to keep you morons in touch with your feelings,” Rowan said, a smile audible in his voice.

“Thank you, Rowan” Chase said and then hung up. He still didn’t _really_ know what to do, but somehow, he felt a little better anyways.

~

The next few weeks were odd, mostly due to him waking up earlier than he needed to and rattling around the house without purpose.

He felt restless, and after getting into arguments with his father (several) and even his mother (just one. She bit him again) he stormed out of the house to look for Leo, who wasn’t answering his phone. Isaac hadn’t texted him. Then again, Chase hadn’t either. He had thought Isaac would at least ask him where he was when he didn’t show up at the marketplace that first day, but there had been radio silence. Because he apparently didn’t actually have any balls, he’d yet to implement Rowan’s crazy plan of talking to Isaac.

He came home near midnight with his old job at the good Starbucks back and the knowledge that Leo had left town to find Tony and Rowan. His old job had been happy to have him back in their minimum-wage clutches, but couldn’t offer him any hours for at least two weeks, leaving Chase once more at a loose end.

One sweltering afternoon a solid two weeks after his argument with Isaac (probably, days were kind of sliding from one to the next without him really noticing), he tried to pass the time by drawing in the conservatory, but he grew frustrated and threw the notebook across the room, knocking over an empty planter. He’d realized five minutes in that he’d been drawing Isaac.

It was disgustingly hot and sticky out, even in the house, so Chase decided it was time to spend some of Leo’s money on ice cream since there was none to be had in the house. His mother had been fairly coherent the day previous, so Chase figured he’d see if she’d tell him what kind she wanted.

The first place he looked was in her room. The second was all of the empty cupboards. Then his father’s room, the basement, the kitchen and the backyard and then he dashed up to check his own room and the laundry room. He even looked in the attic, despite the fact that it was too narrow for an adult to stand up in and covered in two inches of dust.

“Shit,” Chase hissed, roughly scrubbing sweat out of his eyes with the back of one arm.

She’d never taken off before. There had been plenty of problems with his mom hiding, but she rarely left the house, and she hadn’t gone beyond the fence around the yard in longer than Chase could remember.

Gritting his teeth, he pulled out his phone and begrudgingly called his father, hoping he’d uncharacteristically taken her somewhere. He’d take his dad being an asshole and forcing his mom to leave the house for appearance’s sake or something equally stupid over his mom being actually missing any day.

His father didn’t answer. Typical.

Chase numbly left what was probably a completely incoherent message and then pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to frantically think of what to do.

He called the police next. They were less than helpful; his mother hadn’t been missing long enough and was an adult, so they couldn’t report her missing, but at least they had her description if she was brought in.

Chase didn’t know what a heart attack felt like, but he was pretty sure it had to feel a little like what was happening to him.

He called Leo and Tony. Neither of them answered. Neither did Rowan. Anya had no idea what he was talking about. Randy was even more clueless. Laura hadn’t even ever met his mother, but promised to help search for her if it came to that.

In a fit of desperation, he tried Macnair, who was sympathetic enough, but also not in the country and rather irritated about being woken up in the middle of the night given the difference in time zones.

Chase opened up the only other contact in his phone who wasn’t a Black Hawk; Isaac. His thumb hesitated over the call button.

“Goddamnit,” he muttered and thunked the phone against his face.

“Hello?” A voice came from his cellphone.

“Hello?” Chase repeated dumbly into the phone.

“Did you mean to call me, Chase?” Isaac asked, sounding less pissed off than Chase had expected.

“No. I mean yes? I was going to but I hadn’t decided yet. I must have accidentally his call. Sorry.”

There was a pause, Isaac saying something to someone away from the phone. “You sound a little strange. Are you alright?”

“No,” Chase said, without meaning to, and then added, since apparently he was doing this, “My mom’s missing.”

“Could she have gone for a walk or to visit friends?”

“No, she hasn’t left the house in years. I haven’t seen her since yesterday afternoon, I just assumed she was around somewhere. Christ, I was so stupid, I should have looked when she didn’t come out for dinner.” Charles Sr. was right to force her out of her hiding places, if Chase had bothered to do that much he would have realized she was missing so much sooner. Chase was such an idiot, and the very thought of his asshole dad being right made Chase want to punch both himself and his dad in the face.

“Okay, calm down,” Isaac said, sounding improbably calm. Didn’t he realize Chase had told him his mom was _missing_? She could be hurt or dead or afraid or lost for all Chase knew, and Isaac wanted him to calm down?! “It’s going to be okay. I’ll help you find her. I’ll meet you outside the marketplace in half an hour.”

“What about the bakery?” Chase asked, because it was the middle of the afternoon and he knew Isaac had to be at work.

“I’ll take care of it, don’t worry. See you soon,” Isaac replied and hung up before Chase could say anything more.

For lack of any better ideas, Chase grabbed a pair of sandals and his phone and biked to the marketplace.

It was still outstandingly hot out, so he was soaked with sweat by the time he got there. Isaac was already waiting for him, even though it had barely been twenty minutes.

Chase was at a loss for what he was supposed to say, considering their argument the last time they’d seen each other nearly two weeks previous.

Luckily, Isaac seemed to have no such problems.

“We should check the hospital first to see if anyone with her description has come in, and then if that doesn’t work, we’ll form a search party. I used to volunteer at one of the soup kitchens, someone there might have seen her, so I can ask around there too,” Isaac said without preamble.

“Okay,” Chase said, since he really didn’t know what else to say or how to act around this strange take-charge Isaac, and then held the bike still so Isaac could climb up onto the handlebars.

It was harder than biking alone, and less fun than the last time he’d taken Isaac for a ride, but it was faster than walking.

Still, by the time they reached the city hospital several blocks away, Chase’s legs were burning. He didn’t care about that once they got the news that there were no Jane Doe that matched his mom’s description who was recently admitted to the hospital.

Chase thought he was going to pass out.

“Okay, you need to take a deep breath,” Isaac told him, and forced him to sit down on a set of stairs.

“What I need to do is go find my mom,” Chase snapped back, temper shorter than usual.

“And look where?” Isaac asked calmly, “You said that she didn’t leave the house. Us wandering around town aimlessly isn’t likely to be useful. So sit down and I’ll see if anyone at any of the shelters or soup kitchens has seen your mom before we try and get a group together to look for you mom _strategically_ rather than racing off without a plan.”

Isaac fiddled with his phone, the fact that it was an honest to god flip phone making sending a text take four times as long as average.

“I’m sorry for getting mad at you before,” Chase said after a long, moment with only the click of Isaac’s phone to break the silence.

“I’m sorry too,” Isaac said softly. “I shouldn’t have pushed you about your dad.”

“It’s okay,” Chase replied, “I was being a jerk about it.”

“Stop apologizing when I’m trying to say sorry!” Isaac snapped and then had to stifle a giggle.

Chase snorted, and soon both of them were laughing uncontrollably.

And that was when Isaac’s phone rang.

He yanked it out of his pocket and flipped it open. “Hello? Oh, hi gran.” His mouth tugged downward unhappily. “Yes, I did ask Kelly to look after the booth in the market for me. She’s more than capable of dealing with tourists, gran. Yes, _I know_ it’s my responsibility, but something came up. No, that’s not what we’re doing- yes, he’s with me. No- for god’s sake gran, his mother is missing.”

Chase felt a bit awkward listening to half of a conversation so he looked away, staring at a poster reminding guests that the hospital cafeteria closed at seven on Sundays.

“What? Oh, she looks like…” Isaac rattled off the quick description Chase had given him of his mother. “Okay. Thanks gran.”

He hung up the phone and looked at Chase.

“Gran’s mad at me, but she also does a lot of volunteering, so she might find someone who knows where your mom is.”

Chase suddenly disliked Mrs. Ross a lot less. Not everyone would go out of their way like that for someone they harbored an intense hatred for.

“Why didn’t you text?” Chase asked without preamble, startling both himself and Isaac.

“Why didn’t _you_ text?” Isaac shot back.

“I thought you would when I wasn’t at work anymore,” Chase said honestly. “And then it had been so long and I figured you just didn’t want to talk to me.” Also, he was an idiot, but that went without saying.

Isaac smiled faintly. “I thought you were still mad at me, so I didn’t text you. Tarragon told me you’d been working for free after you finished your hours and that her nephew needed the job more than you,” he explained and raised an expectant eyebrow at Chase.

Chase, blushing, muttered to his knees, “Well I wanted to spend time with you.”

Isaac looked at him in surprise, mouth opening to say something.

The phone rang again.

“Hello?” Isaac answered, “Oh. Yes, I know where that is. We’re at the hospital. Thank you, gran.”

“Well?” Chase said the second Isaac’s finger hit the end call button.

“Your mom’s in a halfway house just outside of town. Apparently she took herself there last night. Gran is going to drive us out there.”

“Bless your gran,” Chase said, relief pouring through him.

The drive was short, tense and just the slightest bit awkward. No one said a word until they arrived and Chase mumbled a quick thank you before scrambling out of the car towards the stone building they’d stopped in front of, Isaac not far behind him.

Before they could get inside, Chase’s phone rang. Against his better judgement, he checked the caller ID. The screen read MANIPULATIVE JACKASS. His father was calling. Because of course he was calling right then.

Chase would have ignored the call, but he remembered the utterly incoherent message he’d left and decided ignoring him would probably start more fires than extinguish.

“I found her,” Chase said, hoping to cut his father off the pass so he could get inside the building, see his mom and figure out what the fuck was actually happening.

“Thank god,” Charles Sr. said, actually sounding relieved. It was the most emotion aside from anger that Chase could remember him ever expressing in recent memory. “Where is she?”

“A halfway house-” Chase started to say.

“Good. I’ll come pick her up-”

“You will do no such fucking thing,” Chase snarled, so vehemently that both Isaac and Mrs. Ross looked over at him in surprise.

“Charles-”

“Don’t you fucking _Charles_ me,” Chase snapped, anger starting to boil over so hotly that it almost felt like he was a different person, and was watching this strange person in his body talk. “You are going to not do a fucking thing, just like you’ve always done. I don’t know what’s happening exactly, but it seems like for the first time in _years_ mom has decided to do something for herself and I’m not letting _you_ ruin it.”

“You have to under-”

Chase didn’t give him an inch, and continued hotly, “No, I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you could sit on your ass and let your wife go off the rails like that-”

“ _It was your fault_.” Charles Sr.’s voice was like a whip, and sent a wave of ice down Chase’s spine. “She was fine before you left. She asked you to stay, and when you didn’t, she lost herself.”

Chase couldn’t find the words he wanted to say. Because his father was right. His mom had begged him not to leave, she’d been _terrified_ , and Chase had ignored her and left anyways, so desperate to get away from his father and every other thing in that town that made him feel like such a failure. Then halfway through his second year away, his father had called, the first time since Chase had left. The next day, Chase had withdrawn from his classes and had gone home. His mother had barely recognized him. She’d... she’d all but disappeared under the weight of her own fear. She’d faded.

He drew in a shaky breath, and then suddenly the phone was being ripped out of his hand- by Isaac, who must have heard Charles Sr.’s voice over the phone, had heard what Chase had done, and was _pissed._

“You can’t force someone, much less your _teenaged son_ , to be entirely responsible for someone else’s mental health, and you’d know that if you had even an ounce of compassion in your heart, you comprehensive _asshole_ ,” Isaac snarled into the phone. He was so angry that he was all but vibrating with rage. Chase stared at him wide-eyed, too shocked for words as Isaac continued, “So you are going to continue to not give a damn about Chase or his mother and not do a single thing to ruin whatever is happening, or I swear to god I’ll shove-”

Mrs. Ross calmly reached over and took the phone out of Isaac’s hand and delicately hit ‘end call’.

“Gran!” Isaac protested.

Mrs. Ross handed Chase his phone back and said to Isaac, “We do not waste our time on trash, Isaac. Wasting our time on men like that is beneath us.” She turned to Chase and added, “I may not like you all that much, Chase, but I don’t take kindly to people who don’t look after their family. From what I’ve heard from Isaac, the same might be true for you.” Chase stared at her. Was Isaac’s gran actually maybe warming up to him? “Why don’t you go inside and see your mother,” she added when Chase continued to silently gape at her like a gap-toothed idiot.

Chase stared at her, still at a loss for words, nodded, and headed for the building waiting across the parking lot.

Out of nerves, Chase accidentally flung the door open hard enough that it bounced off the inside wall. The receptionist seemed taken aback by his entrance, and Chase felt like he still wasn’t sure how the spoken language worked. So many things had just happened, his brain felt like it was an old beat up computer trying to run NASA level calculations.

“Is there a Mrs. Hart staying here?” Isaac asked, when Chase still didn’t say anything and continued staring blankly at the receptionist.

The receptionist eyed them curiously, but tapped a few keys and then nodded. “Yes, but there’s a note here saying she’ll only see direct family members. I’ll need to see some ID.”

Chase fumbled to pull out his wallet, and handed his driver’s license over.

“I’ll wait here,” Isaac told Chase who nodded absently and followed the receptionist down the hall.

“She’s in here,” she said, gesturing to a door labelled 112.

Chase hesitated for a fraction of a second, before turning the knob and opening the door.

The room was almost painfully bright, with floor to ceiling windows on one side, a bed on the other. There was a tiny potted plant on one of the window sills. All his time working at Tarragon’s informed him it was a peony.

Most importantly though, was his mother sitting calmly on a comfortable chair beside the window. Her expression was almost serene- it the least afraid he could remember ever seeing her since he was a small child.

“Oh, hello,” she said when she noticed him. There was still a faintly pinched look in her eyes, but she was sitting in the center of an open room and almost smiling.

“Mom,” Chase said, relief pouring through him as he swiftly crossed the room to crouch in front of her chair. “You scared the crap out of me, disappearing like that,” he added, trying and failing at sounding stern.

“Sit down,” she suggested, gesturing at the other chair next to the big windows. “I knew your father would argue if I let you know I was going, so I thought it best to just leave.”

Chase stared. This was the most coherent he could remember his mother being in months. She’d been out of the house for barely a day, and was already this much more relaxed? Chase was not going to punch his father, not after Isaac had all but done that for him, but he wasn’t ever going to forgive him from keeping this from his mother for so long.

“Why did…” Chase trailed off, not quite sure what he wanted to ask. He’d always argued with his father that his mom needed care they couldn’t give her, but he’d never expected her to do it herself. She’d stopped being an adult to him around the time he’d had to come home from university, he’d been her keeper, not her son.

“I wasn’t always like this,” his mom said, eyes going distant as she stared out at the garden beyond the window, “I remember. I didn’t used to feel afraid all the time. I didn’t used to forget what things were or who you- my _son-_ is. But I can’t stop. It was making everyone unhappy. I don’t want to be unhappy anymore. I don’t want to make you unhappy anymore either, and I don’t want you to be stuck in that home because of me. So, I looked up this place on the internet. People said it was a nice, quiet place, so I spent some time setting everything up.”

Chase bit his lip, feeling foolishly emotional. “I’m glad you’re going to get better, mom.”

She smiled gently and said, “Well, you’d better visit me often, the university is only a few hours away.”

“What?” Chase asked, feeling like the floor had just been ripped out from under him for what had to be the fifth time that day. At this rate he was half expecting Gino Vialas to pop out from behind a curtain or something and ask for his hand in marriage and it would only be the third strangest thing to happen that day.

“I checked that too, you still have time to apply to start in the fall again,” she said with a small smile.

“University?” Chase echoed faintly, “Dad won’t be happy about that.”

“Your father needs to learn that he doesn’t always know best,” she replied calmly.

Chase laughed, a weight lifting from his chest.

Somehow, he knew everything was going to be alright.

~

A month later, Chase entered the marketplace after work, still wearing his Starbucks apron and stopped at Tarragon’s and bought the most ridiculously huge bouquet he could afford. It was rather large, as Leo had stopped by the previous night to drop off several things for Chase, including his wallet.

“Hey,” he said to Isaac and set down the bouquet on the counter, next to the cashbox he was counting up.

Without looking up from the tally sheet of the day’s sales, Isaac asked, “How’s your mom?” It was something he did whenever he saw Chase. His mom was not up for visitors who weren’t Chase, since she still had dissociative episode and panicked easily at the sight of strangers, but Isaac had written her a few letters, and they’d gotten to know each other a little. Chase seriously wanted to know what embarrassing baby story she’d shared with him in the last letter that had made Isaac laugh so hard he’d snorted orange juice out his nose. He’d bet Leo’s entire wallet on it being something stupid he’d done with Leo. Pretty much all of his worst baby stories involved Leo, so that didn’t narrow it down much.

“Today wasn’t a good day, but she’ll be okay,” Chase said. Her bad days didn’t scare him like they had when she’d been at the house, because they were slowly starting to be outnumbered by the good ones, and because easing her through the bad ones was no longer solely his responsibility. There were people who actually knew what they were doing to help his mom, and he couldn’t get over what a relief it was. His mom would probably never be exactly like the woman he remembered from his childhood, but Chase was fine with that- she was going to finally feel safe again. That was what mattered.

“And your dad?” Isaac asked absentmindedly, still focused on his tally sheet. His eyebrows were scrunched up in concentration in the most adorable way.

“Oh, he’s his usual charming self, but I haven’t had to talk to him directly in nearly a week which is magical.” Charles Hart Sr had been about as pleased as Chase had expected him to be, but thankfully his mother’s new doctor had shouted him into submission, preventing Chase from having to do it. Isaac’s outburst seemed to have had an effect too- Charles Sr. and Chase rarely crossed paths despite living in the same home, but Charles Sr. seemed to pick his words carefully, like he actually expected Isaac to appear to defend Chase, should he misstep.

They’d had one single argument about it after that, but things had settled after that. Chase liked to think that his father had recognized he had been incredibly wrong- he sometimes saw his father shoot unreadable yet somehow sad looks at his mother’s room and the empty pantry, which Chase figured meant something, though he had no clue what precisely. He and his father would probably never like each other, but in the last month they’d at least found a careful sort of balance.

“Did you really make me come all the way down here to talk about my parents?” Chase asked with an exaggerated pout.

“I didn’t make you- What on earth is that?” Isaac asked when he finally looked up, finally noticing the flowers sprawled all over his counter.

“Flowers,” Chase replied with a grin, ignoring the unimpressed look Isaac gave him in response. “I was going to ask you on a date where we don’t have an argument or have to worry about Black Hawks or anything. Do you have work?”

Isaac shook his head. “No, gran’s cutting my hours back now that she’s convinced Jane to work in the market a few days a week. Tomorrow I get to sleep in till eight,” he added, looking so excited it would be unreasonable if it were anyone else.

“Exciting!” Chase said with a grin. “Let’s get going then. We can party like it’s 1955 since you still need to be asleep before midnight.”

“Hold your horses, I’m almost done,” Isaac said and shifted the bouquet over. He paused, fingers lingering on a myrtle flower. “You aren’t proposing, are you?” he asked Chase with an eyebrow raised.

“What?” Chase said. “You know the meanings of flowers?”

“You thought I didn’t?” Isaac asked, raising an eyebrow, expression unimpressed.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Chase said, pressing both hands over his face.

“I’m the one who actually is into plants,” Isaac pointed out, like a reasonable, rational person, which did nothing to change the fact that Chase wanted to _die._ “I liked the purple lilacs,” Isaac continued blithely, though there was a hint of a smirk at the edges of his mouth. “But the meaning of the first ones you gave me were nice too. Is that amaranth? That’s so sweet.”

“Oh my god,” Chase repeated. He kind of wanted the ground to open up beneath him and eat him whole. He’d known the yarrow was a bad idea.

“Come on,” Isaac said a minute later, “I’m all done, it’s going to take forever to walk to somewhere nice for dinner.”

“Oh, actually,” Chase said perking up, “Leo stopped by last night. He gave me the keys to his car to use while he’s gone with Tony and Rowan. It’ll make it easier to come back and visit while I’m at university.”

“Well, you won’t have to do that for long,” Isaac replied with a secretive smile, “I was accepted there too, starting in January. Studying botany.”

“What? No way!” Chase said and tugged him into a crushing hug, not caring how squished the flowers got.

“Gran and I talked. Well, sort of shouted at each other a lot. But we came to an understanding. That’s why she’s giving me reasonable hours again. She isn’t… happy. But she isn’t going to force me to do anything I don’t want to do.”

“I’m so proud of you!” Chase exclaimed, letting Isaac go.

“Stop it, you sound like my parent or a teacher or something,” Isaac complained, still grinning.

“Oh no! Quick make out with me to make up for it!” Chase replied.

They were both laughing too hard to do more than rest their foreheads together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flower meanings:  
> Jasmine (white): sweet love  
> Hyacinth (general): sincerity (white): loveliness  
> Myrtle: the emblem of marriage, true love  
> Amaranth: undying, everlasting (usually in the context of love)  
> Yarrow: everlasting love


End file.
